Crash victims file lawsuit against Boeing

　　THE family of two crash victims has filed a lawsuit against Boeing Co. in a U.S. court, accusing the company of failing to tell a Taiwanese airline that the tail of one of its planes was improperly repaired before the jet crashed, a law firm said.The lawsuit, filed Monday in Chicago, was the first since the “China Airlines” jetliner broke apart about 20 minutes into a flight from Taipei to Hong Kong on May 25. Investigators still don’t know what caused the accident that killed all 225 people on board.The plaintiffs are relatives of two victims: Taiwanese physician Liang Wen Wan, 42, and her daughter, Shih Peng Yu, 8, their Chicago-based attorney, Donald J. Nolan, said in a statement.Both victims were permanent residents of the United States, and the lawsuit was filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County, said Nolan.Much of the wreckage of Flight CI611 is still missing in the Taiwan Straits. But officials have said that pieces they have found indicate that the plane apparently first split apart in the tail section.Nolan said that a stainless steel — not aluminum alloy — patch had been used to repair damage caused after the Boeing 747-200’s tail hit the runway in 1980 — a common event called a “tail strike.” The work was done shortly after China Airlines bought the brand new plane from Boeing about 23 years ago, his statement said.When the repair was done, it was in line with Boeing’s guidelines, Nolan said. However, the Chicago-based Boeing later changed its structural repair manual and warned that stainless steel patches should not be used to repair the aluminum alloy body of the plane, his statement said.“Once the use of stainless steel was prohibited, there is no evidence disclosed so far to indicate that Boeing advised airlines to inspect or correct prior repairs,” Nolan said.(SD-Agencies)