As just about everyone probably knows by now, a China Airlines jetliner exploded into flames earlier this week shortly after arriving at Naha airport in Okinawa, Japan from Taiwan. Luckily all 157 passengers and eight crewmembers escaped unharmed.
Shortly after that, I saw video reports on TV news programs in Japan in which the president to China Airlines, Chao Kuo-shui, apologized to the passengers that were on the plane as he handed each one a red envelope containing a 100-dollar bill as “compensation money.” Though a number of passengers, who lost all of the baggage they had with them in the fire, expressed disdain at such a paltry sum, a China Airlines spokesman said, “We believe the passengers accepted our sincere apologies.”
Now we get word that China Airlines, which has been deluged with cancellations since the accident, has shifted into full damage control mode and has painted over their company name and logo on what is left of the burned out wreckage still sitting on the tarmac in Naha.
After the accident, photographs and video footage of the jet continued to appear in news reports, and the company apparently painted over the name and logo to limit further damage to its image.
Before
After
According to a spokesperson from China Airlines, “We followed international procedures. We do not have detailed information.”
Thanks to Mr. Pink
Haven’t heard it reported in too many quarters but there was a new China Airlines drama yesterday with a flight from Taipei to Nagoya making an emergency landing at Kansai as it was reportedly running out of fuel. China Airlines later refuted the earlier reports by saying it was because the pilots had been told that Nagoya had been shut.
Who knows…
Apparently it is a standard international procedure to paint over logos. I’ve heard that the planes become property of insurance companies following crashes, and there is no reason to continue having the PR-damaging logo on the body of wrecked planes, so they paint it off or cover it with tarp.
Some examples
A plane from a crash in Sweden, after paint job:
http://www.airliners.net/open.file/0407278/L/
Another China Airlines plane, with a far crappier paint job:
http://www.airliners.net/open.file/0160801/L/
Lost and damaged baggage compensation is covered by the Warsaw Convention (though God knows if China ever signed onto it).
That means there’s a maximum value placed on your bag.
If I remember correctly, it’s about $26.25US per kilo. 30-ish kilos is the usual maximum for checked luggage per passenger so that makes it about $787.50US for everything.
$100US would pay for your dirty underwear and socks, three t-shirts, your toiletries bag and two pairs of shoes.
Not in Tokyo, it wouldn’t. And I doubt it would in Taipei these days, either.
Thanks for the info, James. Learn something new everyday.
At first glance I thought this was some PRC censorship job photoshopping “China” out of the pic. Heh, wrong in this case..
China Airlines is the Taiwan based company. Completely unrelated to the PRC and the mainland. Is Taiwan a signatory of the Geneva Convention or like the UN and everything else, did all that transfer to the PRC?
I know, RTN - which is why PRC powers that be might be uncomfortable with the name “China Airlines” as they are with anything else Taiwanese. The logo area in the second pic seems blurry and distorted so I immediately thought it was an edited picture.
The compensation has been upped to about US$2500 per passenger. see AP news story today
RTN asked:
“Is Taiwan a signatory of the Geneva Convention or like the UN and everything else, did all that transfer to the PRC?”
According to this web site about a Singapore Airlines crash in Taipei in 2000 http://www.trial-law.com/warsaw.html, Taiwan is not a signatory to the Warsaw Convention. I did find a PDF document online that says “China” signed the pact in 1958, but it’s not clear if that means the “PRC” or the “ROC”. It looks like Taiwan follows the terms of the convention in practice, however.