COMBING SEARCH: Rescue divers continue to search for missing persons at the site of a plane crash in Taipei, on Friday. (AP)
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) - One of the two engines on TransAsia Airways Flight 235 went idle 37 seconds after takeoff, and the pilots apparently shut off the other before making a futile attempt to restart it, Taiwan's top aviation safety official said Friday.
It was unclear why the second engine was shut down, since the plane was capable of flying with one engine. Taiwan's official China News Agency said investigators were looking into the possibility of "professional error."
Wednesday's crash into a river in Taipei minutes after takeoff killed at least 35 people and left eight missing. Fifteen people were rescued with injuries after the accident, which was captured in a dramatic dashboard camera video that showed the ATR 72 propjet banking steeply and scraping a highway overpass before it hurtled into the Keelung River.
The flight, which went down on its way from Taipei to an outlying island, marked locally based TransAsia Airways’ second crash since July, and its fate has raised questions about air safety as Taiwan stakes a growing share of its economy on inbound tourism.
Less than a minute after takeoff around 10:52 a.m., the ATR 72 propeller jet’s cockpit sounded a general alarm and a signal indicated abnormality in the No. 2 engine, the Aviation Safety Council said in a statement based on the recorder. Seconds later a crew member mentioned throttling back on the No. 1 engine, the council said.
The flight was about 4,000 feet above ground by then, Taiwan’s semi-official Central News Agency reported.
Within the next minute a deceleration alarm sounded in the cockpit and a crew member confirmed that the first engine was auto-feathering with its fuel cut, the statement said. Feathering means rotating a propeller's blades parallel to the airflow to reduce drag in the event of an engine failure.
The pilot then called a “mayday” distress alert and reported “flameout,” the council statement says. By 10:54 a.m., about a minute before the crash, a crew member was yelling repeatedly to restart, it adds. The voice recording stops after picking up another general alarm.
Council officials said they had not yet determined a reason for the crash or for the actions taken in the minutes beforehand.
“The investigation goes in several phases, and now we’re in the data collection phase,” Wang said later Friday. “When we get to the analysis phase, we’ll look at why things happened. I can’t say anything now about cause.”
An investigation made up of dozens of people, including representatives of the plane's manufacturer ATR and engine maker Pratt & Whitney Canada, will look into the crash over a year to 18 months before releasing a cause.
TransAsia officials say the plane had been used less than a year. An ATR 72 also operated by TransAsia crashed in an outlying Taiwan-controlled island chain in July, killing 48.
Wednesday’s flight GE235, with 53 passengers and five crew members aboard, grazed a bridge and a moving taxi before crashing into the Keelung River. About 190 divers have plumbed the cold, murky river to find bodies submerged near the crash site.
Eight people were missing as of late Friday and 15 were confirmed to have survived. The taxi driver and a passenger were hurt.
The pilot's and co-pilot's bodies were found earlier with their hands still on the controls, Taiwan's ETToday online news service said.
Wang said the engines had shown no problems before the flight and repeatedly stated that the plane would have been able to take off and fly even with only one engine working.
In a sign of concern for the passengers from China, Taiwan Vice President Wu Den-yih paid respects at a funeral home where some of the victims’ relatives were visiting Friday.
President Ma Ying-jeou’s office had warned Thursday that air safety problems “affect trust in our tourism climate among tourists from outside Taiwan.”
More than 30 relatives of victims cried wildly, prayed or were comforted by Buddhist volunteers at the riverside crash site as divers in black wetsuits brought back the four bodies. Some divers came ashore with their hands joined in prayer for the people they brought back
No comments:
Post a Comment