China Airlines bosses offer to quit

Rescue workers continue to recover the remains of victims

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- The chairman and seven board members of the agency that controls Taiwan's China Airlines have offered to resign following last week's crash of a Boeing 747-200 which killed all 225 passengers and crew.

Tsay Jaw-yang, 61, chairman of the nominally private China Aviation Development Foundation which owns 71 percent of the airline, verbally tendered his resignation late on Thursday, Chuang Suo-han, a cabinet spokesman, told reporters on Friday.

Seven of the other eight board members had offered to step down, the spokesman said, adding that the cabinet was expected to approve their resignations, Reuters reports.

Tsay and the foundation came under fire in parliament on Thursday over the crash and families of the victims have vented their anger at the government and the airline for the carrier's appalling safety record.

Last week's crash was China Airlines' fourth fatal accident since 1994.

The families are also angered by delays in retrieving bodies and wreckage from Saturday's disaster.

MORE STORIES Crash unites Taiwan, China in common cause    ANALYSIS • Crash deals blow to China Airlines  • China Airlines' troubled history    AUDIO The press is rife with complaints about Taiwan's poor aviation safety record 1.25 MB / 59 secs WAV sound   EXTRA INFORMATION Gallery: Taiwan tragedy  Timeline: Major air disasters in Asia     CNN.com Asia More news from our Asia edition

Only 97 bodies and 1 percent of the aircraft have been recovered and the black box flight date recorders are on the ocean floor.

The efforts of Taiwan divers' to retrieve the cockpit and flight data recorders and wreckage was on Thursday hindered by rough seas and bad weather.

"We are double checking their position and may send divers with undersea cameras later," an official of the Taiwan cabinet's Aviation Safety Council said by telephone.

"But we have not decided when we will begin to salvage the black boxes because the weather is poor," Reuters news agency quoted the official as saying.

Search teams have located the first large chunk of wreckage from the flight, suspected to be the front cabin of flight CI 611. Some victims could be strapped into their seats.

"The first priority is to recover bodies, then the black boxes, then the wreckage," Transport Minister Lin Lin-san told reporters in Penghu island, nearest the crash site.

The cause of the crash remains a mystery to investigators but weather, turbulance and air traffic control have been ruled out as contributing factors.

Of the 93 bodies so far recovered, a majority had broken bones and dislocated jaws, but no burns -- suggesting they had not been caught in an explosion or fire. Most of the identified bodies were from the middle and tail sections of the aircraft.

The discovery of the flight recorders comes as crash investigators in Taiwan say they hope to use radar and satellite images from ally United States and rival China to help in the search of the 22-year-old jetliner, part of the island's flag carrier fleet.

The flight broke up in mid-air Saturday shortly after takeoff from Taipei en route to Hong Kong, scattering wreckage across a large area of the Taiwan Strait between Taiwan and mainland China.

Satellite help

Kay Yong of Taiwan's Aviation Safety Council told reporters radar and satellite information would help investigators "better estimate the way the debris fell."

America has yet to respond to the request, but China answered quickly. In Beijing, a Chinese spokesman, Zhang Mingqing, said President Jiang Zemin had instructed all relevant mainland departments to help with the salvage work.

China and Taiwan are normally arch-rivals, with Beijing labeling the island a renegade province that must be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary.

So far, only a tiny fraction of the plane has been found with major chunks submerged in the strait near the Penghu island chain, off Taiwan's western coast and about 300 kilometers (180 miles) from Taipei.

Dozens of navy and fishing vessels are looking for the wreckage, a search that could take weeks or months.

Mystery crash

Security officials have said there is no evidence of a terrorist or missile attack. But officials have declined to speculate why the plane went down.

The crew reported no problems before the crash, indicating that whatever happened to the aircraft happened quickly and without warning.

One theory is that structural problems or a sudden cabin depressurization caused the break up of jetliner, which the airliner planned to retire from its fleet next month.

Another theory is that the plane's cargo or fuel tanks exploded, causing it to break up.

Air traffic control radar showed that one chunk of the jet shot backward at a high speed, as if propelled by a blast. The other three parts kept going forward.

TWA flight 800

The hat identified as belonging to the captain of the doomed jet sits among items recovered from the crash site

In a bid to determine the cause, the United States has sent an 11-member team of experts to join the probe, including people from the National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Aviation Administration, Boeing and engine manufacturers Pratt and Whitney.

Among them are six investigators who were involved in the investigation of the 1996 crash of TWA flight 800 -- another Boeing 747, although of an earlier model -- in what experts have called a similar scenario.

That aircraft exploded after take-off from New York's JFK airport scattering debris across a large area of sea.

The investigation determined the most likely cause of that crash was an explosion of fuel vapor in the aircraft's largely empty central fuel tank.