More than 390 passengers on the CAL CI005 Boeing-400 jet returning from Los Angeles last Saturday night were shocked by the sudden pulling up of the plane after its main wheels touched the field at the Taoyuan International Airport.

The chief pilot took over from a foreign copilot after detecting problems that could cause severe damage to the plane. He managed to safely land the jet in a new attempt.

Some passengers and CF officials said CAL should not allow copilots with inadequate experience to use passengers as guinea pigs and put them at risk when honing their flying skills.

A CF official said CAL should put the customers’ safety ahead of its training programs for copilots.

One passenger who was aboard the flight said a copilot explained on the public address system that the episode was caused by some problems at the flight control center.

A CAL executive explained that the copilot probably did not give the true cause so as not to cause panic.

Another executive said the weather and flight conditions on Saturday evening were suitable for new copilot to perform the landing operations.

Senior pilots at CAL said during the past five years, local airlines have laid off pilots and copilots with Republic of China nationality, while hiring a large number of foreign pilots.

They claimed the foreign copilots have often landed the planes badly.

Landing an airplane is always among the most complicated flight operations and between 60 and 70 percent air crashes take place during the landing process, they said.

CAL had two Airbus passenger jets crashed respectively at Japan’s Nagoya airport in April 1994 with 264 people perished and at the Taoyuan airport in February 1998 in which 196 people aboard and six on ground were killed.

Both incidents took place when pilots sought to make a second landing attempt.

Following a thorough probe into the Feb. 23 event, CAA officials said the new landing attempt by the CAL jet conformed with standard flight operations.

They said the abrupt takeover by the chief pilot from the copilot for a new landing also fell into the field of normal flight operations.

The decision to make a new landing attempt had nothing to do with the flight control tower operations, they said.

Concerning the allegation that the foreign copilot in the case does not have adequate flight experience, the CAA officials said all foreign pilots employed by Taiwan’s air carriers have accumulated flight experience of more than 1,500 hours.

This means that CAL did not violate rules by allowing copilots with insufficient experience to handle landings, they added.

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