Thai Airways International Flight 601 was a

Sud Aviation Caravelle The Sud Aviation SE 210 Caravelle is a French jet airliner produced by Sud Aviation. It was developed by SNCASE in the early 1950s and made its maiden flight on 27 May 1955. It included some de Havilland designs and components developed f ...

that crashed into the sea on landing at the former

Kai Tak Airport Kai Tak Airport was the international airport of Hong Kong from 1925 until 1998. Officially known as Hong Kong International Airport from 1954 to 6 July 1998, it is often referred to as Hong Kong International Airport, Kai Tak, or simply Ka ...

, Hong Kong, in a

typhoon A typhoon is a mature tropical cyclone that develops between 180° and 100°E in the Northern Hemisphere. This region is referred to as the Northwestern Pacific Basin, and is the most active tropical cyclone basin on Earth, accounting for a ...

on Friday, 30 June 1967.

Accident

Thai Airways International Thai Airways International Public Company Limited, trading as THAI (, th, บริษัท การบินไทย จำกัด (มหาชน)) is the flag carrier airline of Thailand. Formed in 1961, the airline has its corporate h ...

Flight 601 took off from

Taipei Songshan Airport Taipei Songshan Airport is a regional airport and military airbase located in Songshan District, Taipei, Taiwan. The airport covers an area of . The civilian section of Songshan Airport has scheduled flights to domestic destinations in Taiwa ...

(TSA/RCSS) on an hour-long flight to Kai Tak Airport. The Sud Aviation Caravelle (Registration: HS-TGI), which had made its first flight in 1960, had 80 souls aboard: 73 passengers and 7 crew. With the plane on ILS approach to runway 31 at Kai Tak (HKG/VHHH), the Captain became occupied trying to make visual contact with the ground, and failed to notice that the aircraft had descended below the decision height of . The crew made an abrupt heading change (while already below the glide slope), and then entered a high-speed descent. The aircraft undershot

runway According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a runway is a "defined rectangular area on a land aerodrome prepared for the landing and takeoff of aircraft". Runways may be a man-made surface (often asphalt, concrete ...

31 and crashed into the sea, killing 24 passengers. Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport 1971

Probable cause

The probable cause of the accident was

pilot error Pilot error generally refers to an accident in which an action or decision made by the pilot was the cause or a contributing factor that led to the accident, but also includes the pilot's failure to make a correct decision or take proper a ...

, specifically not noticing that the aircraft had descended below the

glide slope Instrument landing system glide path, commonly referred to as a glide path (G/P) or glide slope (G/S), is "a system of vertical guidance embodied in the instrument landing system which indicates the vertical deviation of the aircraft from its o ...

. The presence of strong

wind shear Wind shear (or windshear), sometimes referred to as wind gradient, is a difference in wind speed and/or direction over a relatively short distance in the atmosphere. Atmospheric wind shear is normally described as either vertical or horizont ...

and

downdraft In meteorology, an updraft is a small-scale current of rising air, often within a cloud. Overview Localized regions of warm or cool air will exhibit vertical movement. A mass of warm air will typically be less dense than the surrounding region, ...

s as a result of then-present Typhoon Anita was a probable contributing factor. However, at the time of the accident there were no means of detecting such weather phenomena. Further factors included: * The pilots did not adhere to Thai Airways procedure for a captain-monitored

Instrument approach In aviation, an instrument approach or instrument approach procedure (IAP) is a series of predetermined maneuvers for the orderly transfer of an aircraft operating under instrument flight rules from the beginning of the initial approach to a landi ...

in bad visibility. * The captain did not monitor the approach adequately. * The abrupt heading change after the aircraft descended below minimum altitude may have exacerbated the high rate of descent. * Downdrafts and wind shear may have contributed to the height loss which resulted from this mishandling.

References

*

{{Aviation accidents and incidents in 1967 Aviation accidents and incidents in 1967 Aviation accidents and incidents in Hong Kong Accidents and incidents involving the Sud Aviation Caravelle

601 __NOTOC__ Year 601 ( DCI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. The denomination 601 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era bec ...

Airliner accidents and incidents involving controlled flight into terrain Airliner accidents and incidents caused by weather Airliner accidents and incidents caused by pilot error 1967 in Hong Kong 1967 meteorology June 1967 events in Asia