China Airlines Flight 611
2002 aviation accident in Taiwan
China Airlines Flight 611 was a regularly scheduled international passenger flight operated by a Boeing 747-200 from Chiang Kai-shek International Airport (now Taoyuan International Airport) in Taiwan to Hong Kong International Airport. On May 25th, 2002, the flight disintegrated midair and crashed into the Taiwan Strait, 26 miles (23 nmi; 42 km) northeast of the Penghu Islands, 20 minutes after takeoff, killing all 225 people on board. The in-flight breakup was caused by metal fatigue cracks from a tailstrike at Kai Tak Airport on 7 of February 1980 after which the aircraft was not properly repaired according to Boeing policies and manuals. Metal fatigue from over 22 years of service and repeated pressurization cycles caused tiny cracks that led to the aircraft's breakup.
The crash remains the deadliest in Taiwan, as well as the most recent accident with fatalities involving China Airlines, and the second-deadliest accident in China Airlines history, behind China Airlines Flight 140 with 264 fatalities.
Aircraft
The aircraft involved, registered as B-18255, was the only Boeing 747-200 passenger aircraft left in China Airlines's fleet at the time. The plane was delivered new to the airline on 2 August 1979, and spent its entire life with the airline. The aircraft had logged more than 64,800 hours of flight time at the time of the accident. The plane was equipped with 4 Pratt and Whitney JT9D-7AW engines and had a 355-seat configuration. The accident flight was to be the aircraft's penultimate flight for China Airlines, as it was scheduled to be delivered to Orient Thai Airlines after its return flight from Hong Kong to Taipei.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “China Airlines Flight 611” as 2002 aviation accident in Taiwan. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as 2002 aviation accident in Taiwan. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q435806. Authority coordinates are 23.990, 119.679. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2002, 1980 and 1979.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “China Airlines Flight 611” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.