China Airlines Flight 202 accident

China Airlines Flight 202 is a scheduled flight from Shanghai Pudong International Airport, Shanghai, People's Republic of China, to Songshan Airport, Taipei, Republic of China; the aircraft was a 2004 Airbus A330-302 (registration B-18302). On 14 June 2020 it flew from Shanghai Pudong Airport to Taipei Songshan Airport and landed at 5:49 pm, experiencing failure of the spoilers, autobrake and engine thrust reversers. On discovering the problem, the captain immediately switched to manual braking and stopped 10 metres before the end of the runway; the aircraft, crew and passengers were all unharmed.

Cause of the accident

After an investigation of more than a year, the Taiwan Transportation Safety Board announced the main cause of this accident. The flight control computer itself has two channels, a monitoring channel and a command channel; however, over time a very small time difference develops between the two channels, which would not be noticed in normal flight. But when CI202 landed, the main wheels bounced once after touchdown, and on touchdown heavy rudder inputs were made to counter the crosswind, causing the flight control computers to become desynchronised; at this point the primary flight control computer failed and control passed to the secondary flight control computer, causing the spoilers, autobrake and thrust reversers all to fail.