JULY 2, 2015
TransAsia Plane Crashed in February After Faulty Sensor, Errors by Pilots
A faulty connector sending inaccurate information and pilots mistakingly shutting down the wrong engine during a flameout led to the February crash of a TransAsia Airways Corp. plane, investigators said.
Flight GE235 had a connector that failed to send right information to
the propeller plane’s computer systems, triggering an unnecessary
automatic correction move, known as autofeather, according to a factual
data report published by Taiwan’s Aviation Safety Council Thursday. The
ATR plane’s two pilots then followed a procedure that shut down the
wrong engine, its executive director Thomas Wang said in Taipei.
“He
called it wrong” when calling for shut down of engine 1, when engine
2 flameout procedure was displayed on screen in cockpit, Wang said. “We
didn’t see some procedures being followed,” he said.
The pilot in command of TransAsia Flight GE235 called for reduction
in power to engine 1, five seconds after a master warning sounded, the
Aviation Safety Council said in its factual report. Flight GE235 lost
altitude, clipped an elevated highway and crashed into a nearby river
minutes after takeoff from Taipei’s Songshan airport on Feb. 4, killing
43 people including the pilots. Some people survived the crash.
About 36 seconds after takeoff, the propeller-driven plane’s No. 2
engine autofeathered with the No. 1 engine being shut off 46 seconds
after that, according to a preliminary report by the Aviation Safety
Council published Feb. 17. The pilots discussed an engine flameout 35
seconds before making a Mayday call and subsequent crash three minutes
and three seconds after takeoff.
Temporary Grounding
Autofeather is a feature in propeller aircraft that automatically
turns a propeller’s blades parallel to airflow, called feathering, to
reduce drag.
The crash was the airline’s second fatal accident involving an ATR72
turboprop aircraft within a year. The first, in July 2014, killed 48
people.
While aviation authorities temporarily grounded all ATR aircraft in
Taiwan for checks after the February crash and ordered retraining of
TransAsia pilots, the airline won a delay of a new flight safety rule
introduced specifically for
TransAsia after the July crash.
Logbooks for the aircraft that crashed Feb. 4, which were released
publicly and reviewed by Bloomberg, showed that pilots didn’t meet new
requirements to remain at the gate at least 30 minutes between flights
to allow time to conduct safety checks.
A 20-minute turnaround earlier on the day of the crash didn’t
necessarily breach the new rules because TransAsia had requested, and
was granted, a delay in implementation of the regulation by two months,
the Civil Aeronautics Administration said at the time.
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Valuable Routes, Insurance Cover Insulate TransAsia From Grim Crash Record
By Clare Baldwin and Yimou Lee | February 5, 2015
Even after two deadly crashes in seven months,
TransAsia Airways Corp. will likely rebound quickly as insurance covers
any financial losses and its coveted routes through Taipei’s downtown
airport keep it popular with business travelers.
Airline analysts said the carrier may have to offer discounts to lure
back passengers after Flight GE235 ended in at least 31 fatalities on
Wednesday.
Amateur video from a car dashboard camera showed the plane
clipped a taxi and a bridge before smashing upside down in a shallow
river.
“Songshan
(airport) is in downtown Taipei… so their flights are valuable,
especially for the corporate guys,” said Marc Wang, manager at KGI
Securities in Taiwan. “I don’t think they will give up the business.”
TransAsia operates about 22 daily flights from Songshan, mainly to
domestic destinations but also to a few Chinese cities, including
Shanghai.
The larger Taoyuan Airport is about an hour from central Taipei by
road and handles the majority of international flights, channeling
almost 36 million passengers in 2014 compared with just over 6 million
for Songshan.
Taiwan Fire & Marine Insurance Co. Ltd. said it had underwritten
TransAsia’s aviation hull and passenger liability insurance and
estimated its maximum retained loss at $225,000, which it said would
have no significant impact on its business.
Two other insurers, Cathay Financial Holding Co. Ltd. and Mega
Financial Holding Co. Ltd., said they expected no significant financial
impact from related claims.
Wednesday’s crash and another fatal accident in July mean TransAsia
is suspended from opening new routes, which will set back its ambition
to grow as a regional carrier, said Michael Lee, Taiwan airlines analyst
at Primasia Securities in Taipei.
“It’s a problem for TransAsia because for the last two or three
years, TransAsia has been working pretty hard to shift its focus from
the domestic market to the regional market,” Lee said. “The margin of
the domestic routes is much lower than the regional routes.”
TransAsia bounced back quickly from the July crash. Revenue passenger
kilometers – a measure of an airline’s traffic – dropped 64 percent in
July from June, but rebounded in August, JihSun Securities Investment
wrote in a research note. Insurance covered all compensation claims, it
said.
The airline is part of conglomerate Goldsun Group, which has
businesses ranging from concrete to telecommunications. TransAsia
accounted for about 39 percent of the group’s total revenue in 2013,
according to an annual report from subsidiary Goldsun Development &
Construction Company Ltd.
“We hope the market can have some faith in us,” said Tu Pei Chun, a
spokeswoman for Goldsun. “There will be some confidence issues in the
market in the short term, and it’s understandable, but in the longer
term, our flight business is quite good and we have the top-level
staff.”
KGI’s Wang said steep discounts could help restore consumer confidence. “People forget bad things quickly.”
(Reporting by Yimou Lee and Clare Baldwin in Hong Kong; additional
reporting by Ben Blanchard and Twinnie Siu; writing by Emily Kaiser;
editing by Christopher Cushing)