CRASHED TAIWAN PLANE HOISTED FROM RIVER; 26 CONFIRMED DEAD
February 4,
2015
TAIPEI,
Taiwan — Rescuers used a crane to hoist the fuselage of a wrecked TransAsia
Airways plane from a shallow river in Taiwan's capital late Wednesday as they
searched into the night for 17 people missing in a crash that killed at least
26 others.
Flight
235 with 58 people aboard — most of them travelers from China — banked sharply
on its side shortly after takeoff from Taipei, clipped a highway bridge and
then careened into the Keelung River.
Rescuers
in rubber rafts pulled 15 people alive from the wreckage during daylight. After
dark, they brought in the crane, and the death toll was expected to rise once
crews were able to search through submerged portions of the fuselage, which
came to rest a few dozen meters (yards) from the shore.
Dramatic
video clips apparently taken from cars were posted online and aired by
broadcasters, showing the ATR 72 propjet as it pivoted onto its side while
zooming toward a traffic bridge over the river. In one of them, the plane
rapidly fills the frame as its now-vertical wing scrapes over the road, hitting
a vehicle before heading into the river.
Speculation
cited in local media said the crew may have turned sharply to follow the line
of the river to avoid crashing into a high-rise residential area, but Taiwan's
aviation authority said it had no evidence of that.
Taiwanese
broadcasters repeatedly played a recording of the plane's final contact with
the control tower in which the crew called out "Mayday" three times.
The recording offered no direct clues as to why the plane was in distress.
It
was the airline's second French-Italian-built ATR 72 to crash in the past year.
Wednesday's flight had taken off at 11:53 a.m. from Taipei's downtown Sungshan
Airport en route to the outlying Taiwanese-controlled Kinmen islands.
The crew
issued the mayday call shortly after takeoff, Taiwanese civil aviation
authorities said.
TransAsia
director Peter Chen said contact with the plane was lost four minutes after
takeoff. He said weather conditions were suitable for flying and the cause of
the accident was unknown.
"Actually
this aircraft in the accident was the newest model. It hadn't been used for
even a year," he told a news conference.
Thirty-one
passengers were from China, Taiwan's tourism bureau said. Kinmen's airport is a
common link between Taipei and China's Fujian province.
Taiwan's
Civil Aeronautics Administration said 26 people were confirmed dead, 15 were
rescued with injuries and 17 were still missing. It said two people on the
ground were hurt.
Wu
Jun-hong, a Taipei Fire Department official who was coordinating the rescue,
said the missing people were either still in the fuselage or had perhaps been
pulled down the river.
"At
the moment, things don't look too optimistic," Wu told reporters at the
scene. "Those in the front of the plane are likely to have lost their
lives."
Rescuers
could be seen pulling luggage from an open plane door to clear the fuselage.
Ten inflatable dinghies also searched for the missing.
As
a drizzle fell around nightfall, military crews took portable bridges to the
scene, where rescue workers were building docks for easier access to the
wreckage. About 300 rescue personnel and members of the media stood along the
banks of the narrow river.
Part
of the freeway above it was littered with debris and was closed after the
crash.
Relatives
of the victims had not reached the scene by dusk Wednesday but some were
expected to arrive Thursday, including some flying from Beijing.
The
plane's wing hit a taxi on the freeway, and the driver and a passenger were
injured, Chen said.
Taiwan's
Ministry of National Defense said it had sent 165 people and eight boats to the
riverside rescue scene, joining fire department rescue crews.
Another
ATR 72 operated by the same Taipei-based airline crashed in the outlying
Taiwan-controlled islands of Penghu last July 23, killing 48 at the end of a
typhoon for reasons that are still under investigation.
ATR,
a French-Italian consortium based in Toulouse, France, said it was sending a
team to Taiwan to help in the investigation.
The
ATR 72-600 that crashed Wednesday is manufacturer's best plane model, and the
pilot had 4,900 hours of flying experience, said Lin Chih-ming of the Civil
Aeronautics Administration.
Greg
Waldron, Asia managing editor at Flightglobal magazine in Singapore, said the
ATR 72-600 is the latest iteration of one of the most popular turboprop planes
in the world, particularly favored for regional short-hop flights in Asia.
It
has a generally good reputation for safety and reliability and is known among
airlines for being cheap and efficient to operate.
While
it's too early to say what caused the crash, engine trouble or weight shifting
were unlikely to be causes, Waldron said. Other possible factors include pilot
error, weather or freak incidents such as bird strikes.
"It's
too early now to speculate on whether it was an issue with the aircraft or
crew," Waldron said.
The
accessibility of the crash site should allow for a swift investigation, and an
initial report should be available within about a month, Waldron said.