Thai Airways International Flight 601 was a Sud Aviation Caravelle that crashed into the sea on landing at the former Kai Tak Airport, Hong Kong, in a typhoon on Friday, 30 June 1967.

Aircraft

The aircraft involved was a Sud Aviation SE-210 Caravelle III, MSN 25, registered as HS-TGI, which was manufactured by Sud Aviation in 1960. The aircraft had logged approximately 17350 airframe hours and was equipped with two Rolls-Royce Avon 527 engines.

Accident

Thai Airways International Flight 601 took off from Taipei Songshan Airport on an hour-long flight to Kai Tak Airport. The Sud Aviation Caravelle had 80 people aboard: 73 passengers and 7 crew. With the plane on ILS approach to runway 31 at Kai Tak, Captain Viggo Thorsen (age 43) and Co-pilot Sanit Khemanand (aged 50) became occupied trying to make visual contact with the ground. They failed to notice that the aircraft had descended below the decision height of 415 ft. The crew made an abrupt heading change (while already 80 ft below the glide slope), and then entered a high-speed descent. The aircraft undershot runway 31 and crashed into the sea, killing 24 passengers.

Probable cause

The probable cause of the accident was pilot error, specifically not noticing that the aircraft had descended below the glide slope. The presence of strong wind shear and downdrafts as a result of then-present Typhoon Anita was a probable contributing factor. However, there were no means of detecting such weather phenomena at the time of the accident. Further factors included: