Boeing accused after plane crash
An American law firm is suing planemaker Boeing, accusing the company of failing to tell a Taiwanese airline that cracks in one of its planes were improperly repaired before the jumbo jet crashed.
The lawsuit, filed in Chicago by the Nolan Law Group, was the first since the China Airlines jet broke apart about 20 minutes into a flight from Taipei to Hong Kong on May 25.
Investigators have yet to say what caused the accident that killed all 225 people on board.
Lawyer Donald Nolan, an expert in aviation disaster cases, filed the lawsuit in the Circuit Court of Cook County on behalf of the family of two victims, Taiwanese doctor Liang Wen Wan, aged 42, and her daughter, Shih Peng Yu, aged eight, the firm said in a statement.
Both were permanent residents of the United States, the statement said.
Investigators are still recovering wreckage from Flight CI611, which plunged deep into the Taiwan Strait.
But officials have said that pieces they have found indicate that the plane apparently first split apart in the tail section, and investigators are analysing cracks in that area.
Nolan, who recently met investigators in Taiwan, said that stainless steel - not aluminium alloy - patches had been used to repair damage caused after the Boeing 747-200’s tail hit or scrapped the runway on take-off - a common event called a "tail strike".
The work was done shortly after China Airlines bought the 23-year-old plane from Boeing, his statement said.
When the repairs were done, they were in line with Boeing’s guidelines at the time, Nolan said.
But Chicago-based Boeing later changed its structural repair manual and forbid the use of stainless steel patches, his statement said.
"Improper blending of metals in repairs can alter stress paths and overload surrounding areas," the firm’s statement said.
"Once the use of stainless steel was prohibited for use, there is no evidence disclosed so far to indicate that Boeing advised airlines to inspect or correct prior repairs," Nolan said.
The lawyer warned that other aircraft could be flying with stainless steel patches similar to the ones used by China Airlines.
China Airlines would not immediately comment on the lawsuit or the issue about what materials have been used for repairs on other planes.
In Seattle, Boeing spokeswoman Kathleen Hanser told The Associated Press: "We just heard about it (the lawsuit), but since it’s active litigation, we wouldn’t comment anyway."
