Typhoon Ira was churning through the region as Flight 605 began its descent toward Kai Tak International Airport, Hong Kong's famously demanding urban airfield. Kai Tak sat embedded in the city itself — surrounded by apartment blocks, with its main runway extending into the harbour on a reclaimed peninsula. The approach to runway 13, the so-called checkerboard approach, required pilots to descend steeply over Kowloon, bank sharply right over a painted hillside marker, and align with the runway at low altitude in a compressed, high-stakes sequence that even experienced crews respected. On this November afternoon, the aircraft's computers generated repeated wind shear warnings and glide slope deviation alerts during the final mile before touchdown. The captain, pilot flying, disconnected the autopilot and took manual control. He also disconnected the autothrottle, dissatisfied with its response in the turbulent conditions. The aircraft was still descending into a storm, and the two men in the cockpit were now managing every system by hand.

Once the 747 touched down, the first officer took the controls to track the runway centerline. His inputs were too aggressive, and the captain had to assist — both men working the controls simultaneously in the crosswind. At that moment, the captain inadvertently advanced engine power instead of deploying the thrust reversers, the devices that redirect engine exhaust forward to slow the aircraft. The autobrakes, set to a low-intensity setting, switched off seconds after touchdown as a result of the power increase. The speedbrakes extended briefly and then retracted. The massive aircraft, still carrying speed on a rain-soaked runway, was effectively floating — brakes ineffective, thrust reversers not engaged. By the time the first officer recognized that both the autobrakes were disarmed and the thrust reversers had not deployed, and the captain immediately applied manual braking and reversal, Kai Tak's runway was running out. The subsequent official investigation found that the captain should have initiated a go-around when he first observed the severe airspeed fluctuations, and that the first officer lacked sufficient experience to manage crosswind landings in such conditions. China Airlines was also criticized for failing to provide clear crosswind landing procedures in its operational manuals.

Facing the certain prospect of overrunning the runway and striking the approach lighting system for the reciprocal runway, the captain made a deliberate choice: he turned the aircraft hard to the left. The maneuver induced a ground loop — the plane spun and slid off the left side of the runway into Victoria Harbour. It came to rest in shallow water with its nose roughly facing the direction from which it had come, and then began to settle, sinking tail-first. The cabin public address system had been damaged and was not working. The crew had not warned passengers that an overrun was imminent. With no PA and no megaphones in use, the cabin crew organized an evacuation from memory, using eight of the ten main deck emergency exits, each equipped with inflatable evacuation slide-rafts designed exactly for this scenario. The passenger cabin remained fully above the waterline throughout the evacuation. All passengers donned life jackets before leaving. The airport fire service, already on standby because of the storm, responded within one minute of the alarm from the control tower. Tugboats, private motorboats, and Marine Police vessels converged on the scene. The rescue operation was complete within 30 minutes. Twenty-three people sustained minor injuries. No one died.

The aircraft — registered B-165, a Boeing 747-400 that had been in service for just five months and had logged only 1,969 flight hours — was written off as a total loss. It was also, in the records of aviation history, the first hull loss of a Boeing 747-400. The submerged 747 created an immediate navigation problem: its vertical stabilizer was large enough to interfere with the instrument landing system for the reciprocal runway direction. Dynamite was used to remove the stabilizer. The China Airlines name and markings were stripped from the fuselage. The hull was eventually moved near the HAECO aircraft maintenance complex and repurposed as a training prop for airport firefighters — a 300-tonne classroom in the consequences of what can go wrong at the edge of a runway, over water, in a storm.