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Relatives await news of their loved ones in the Penghu island city of Makung. Photo: Reuters
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A senior safety official in Taiwan said today the ill-fated China Airlines Boeing 747-200 plane "disintegrated" into four large chunks in mid-air before plunging into the sea.
"We are very certain the plane disintegrated while above 30,000 feet," Mr Kay Yong, managing director of the cabinet's Aviation Safety Council, told a news conference.
Rescuers continued searching today for bodies and debris from the jet as hopes faded for any survivors.
Weak signals have been picked up from the jet's black boxes.
"Weak signals from the black boxes had been received, and a naval ship will be dispatched to
locate them," Transport Minister Mr
Lin Ling-san said in Makung, the biggest
city in the Penghu island group.
The black boxes - the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder - may help investigators explain the cause of the mid-air disintegration.
More than 75 bodies have been recovered from the rough seas of the Taiwan Strait north of the Penghu Islands group so far.
The China Airlines Boeing 747-200 jumbo jet was on a flight from Taipei to Hong Kong when it abruptly disappeared from radar today, fueling speculation of a catastrophic "inflight breakup."
The pilot did issue any distress signal and weather was clear at the time.
US aerospace giant Boeing, the manufacturer of the plane, said in a statement it would be "providing immediate technical assistance to the investigating authorities."
The majority of the passengers were Taiwanese while nine were listed as Chinese mainlanders. There were several passengers from Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore aboard and one from Switzerland.
AFP &