TransAsia flight crashes in Taiwan river - as it happened

Dark Sorrow

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A TransAsia Airways flight in Taiwan carrying 58 passengers and crew careened past buildings, clipped a highway and crashed into a shallow stream, killing at least 23 people.

TransAsia GE 235, a domestic flight from Taipei to Kinmen – a small archipelago near mainland China – crashed at 10.56am local time, according to Taiwan's aviation council, about three minutes after it took off. Astonishing dash-cam videos posted online showed the turboprop ATR 72-600 aircraft in its final airborne moments, turning vertical over a highway and clipping a taxi cab and a bridge with its left wing.
 

Dark Sorrow

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A plane carrying mostly Chinese tourists has crashed into a river in Taiwan, killing at least 25 people.

Dramatic video footage emerged showing the TransAsia Airways plane clipping a bridge as it came down shortly after take-off from a Taipei airport.

The plane, carrying 58 people, has broken up and the fuselage is lying half-submerged in the Keelung River. Rescue efforts are ongoing.

At least 15 people have been pulled out alive, with 18 still missing.

Television footage showed some passengers wading clear of the sunken wreckage and a toddler being pulled out alive by rescuers.

The dramatic moment a toddler was rescued from the wreckage of the jet

Emergency teams cut open the plane but were unable to reach passengers trapped in the front section of the fuselage.

As night fell, a crane was used to lift the wreckage onto the bank. The death toll was expected to rise as rescue teams searched the previously submerged area of the plane.

"At the moment, things don't look too optimistic," Wu Jun-hong, a Taipei fire department official coordinating the rescue effort told reporters.




The ATR-72 turbo-prop plane had just taken off from Taipei Songshan Airport and was heading to the Kinmen islands, just off the coast of the south-eastern Chinese city of Xiamen.

It is the second TransAsia ATR-72 to crash in seven months, following an accident last July which killed 48 people and injured 15.

The final communication from the pilots to air traffic control was "Mayday, mayday, engine flame out", according to a recording played on local media. The recording was not immediately verified by aviation officials.
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Analysis: Richard Westcott, BBC transport correspondent

Yet again, we are looking at shocking pictures of a plane crash. You'd be forgiven for thinking that flying is getting more dangerous, but it's not. In fact, when you look at the number of crashes and fatalities compared to the huge number of people flying today, we are in a golden era of aircraft safety.

According to safety analysts Ascend, 2014 was narrowly the safest year ever, with one fatal accident per 2.38 million flights, compared to every 1.91 million flights in 2013. That does not include the loss of the Malaysian airliner over Ukraine, where 298 people died, which they count as a war loss rather than an accident.

Nearly a thousand people died in 2014, which is 700 more than the year before. Horrible numbers but compare that to the worst year, 1972, when 2,370 passengers were killed. There was far less flying then, maybe a quarter of what there is today.

Nothing is ever without risk, but the chances of dying in an aircraft "accident" are lower than ever.
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Flight controllers lost contact with the plane at 10:55 local time (02:55 GMT).

Footage of the plane filmed from inside passing cars showed it banking sharply, hitting a taxi and clipping the bridge before crashing into the river.

"I saw a taxi, probably just metres ahead of me, being hit by one wing of the plane," an eyewitness told local media.

"The plane was huge and really close to me. I'm still trembling."

The BBC's Cindy Sui: says there are still people trapped on the plane

TV footage showed rescuers standing on the tail section of the broken wreckage trying to pull passengers out of the plane with ropes.

One Taiwanese father told reporters he managed to rescue his wife before noticing his two-year-old son was still trapped underwater. The boy was later rescued but is believed to be in critical condition.

The majority of the plane, including the front section of the fuselage and the wings, was submerged after it plunged into the Keelung River.

Jaime Molloy, an English teacher who has lived in Taipei for three-and-a-half years and works near the scene of the crash, told the BBC: "The most disturbing scenes I saw were the debris, which included carry-on luggage and personal affects, as well as parts of the plane."

TransAsia said it had contacted relatives of all the 22 Taiwanese passengers on board and was attempting to reach relatives of the Chinese nationals.

Among the 15 injured, there were 11 from Taiwan, three from China and one member of the crew. The airline said that one injured passenger had already been discharged from hospital.



The BBC's Cindy Sui in Taipei says the Chinese tourists could have been on their way home as many people come to Taiwan through Kinmen island.

TransAsia chief Chen Xinde offered a "deep apology" in a televised news conference, but said his planes had been "under thorough scrutiny" since mid-2014.

"Both our planes and our flight safety system are following strict regulations, so we also want to know what caused the new plane model to crash, but I don't want to speculate," he said.

The plane's flight data recorders, also known as black boxes, have been recovered.

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[video]http://multimedia.guardianapis.com/interactivevideos/video.php?octopusid=10040080&format=video/mp4[/video]
 

Dark Sorrow

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TransAsia plane crashes in Taiwan river, killing at least 23 people

A TransAsia Airways flight in Taiwan carrying 58 passengers and crew careened past buildings, clipped a highway and crashed into a shallow stream, killing at least 23 people.

TransAsia GE 235, a domestic flight from Taipei to Kinmen – a small archipelago near mainland China – crashed at 10.56am local time, according to Taiwan's aviation council, about three minutes after it took off. Astonishing dash-cam videos posted online showed the turboprop ATR 72-600 aircraft in its final airborne moments, turning vertical over a highway and clipping a taxi cab and a bridge with its left wing.




Rescuers are searching into the night for 20 missing people, after 15 were pulled alive from the wreckage.

"Several fire engines, ambulances, water craft and almost 170 rescue staff have been dispatched," said a press release by the Taiwanese Central Disaster Response Centre. Local TV stations broadcasted footage of rescue workers in life vests and yellow helmets surrounding the plane's fuselage in inflatable rafts.


At the moment, things don't look too optimistic," said Wu Jun-hong, a Taipei Fire Department official who was coordinating the rescue, according to the Associated Press. "Those in the front of the plane are likely to have lost their lives."

The driver of the clipped taxi cab "has been sent to a local hospital", an assistant to the Crown Taxi Company's general manager who identified himself as Mr Yang told the Guardian.

"He has head injury and concussion, but all of his vital signs are stable." Yang added that the company planned to raise the topic of compensation with TransAsia Airways at a later date.


Rescuers carry out rescue operations after a TransAsia plane crashed into a river in New Taipei City. Photograph: Pichi Chuang/Reuters


The last communication from one of the aircraft's pilots was "Mayday Mayday engine flameout", according to an air traffic control recording on liveatc.net.

A flameout occurs when the fuel supply to the engine is interrupted or when there is faulty combustion, resulting in an engine failure.

The flight's black box has been recovered, according to local media.

"Weather conditions were good and the pilot had 14,000 hours of flying hours and the co-pilot 4,000 hours," Lin Zhiming, a representative from Taiwan's Civil Aviation Authority, told reporters on Wednesday afternoon.
[video]http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/04/taiwan-plane-crash-lands-in-river#img-3[/video]
Rescuers carry out rescue operations after a TransAsia plane crashed into a river in New Taipei City. Photograph: Pichi Chuang/Reuters

The last communication from one of the aircraft's pilots was "Mayday Mayday engine flameout", according to an air traffic control recording on liveatc.net.

A flameout occurs when the fuel supply to the engine is interrupted or when there is faulty combustion, resulting in an engine failure.

The flight's black box has been recovered, according to local media.

"Weather conditions were good and the pilot had 14,000 hours of flying hours and the co-pilot 4,000 hours," Lin Zhiming, a representative from Taiwan's Civil Aviation Authority, told reporters on Wednesday afternoon.


Search and rescue team members operate on a TransAsia Airways passenger plane crashed into the Keelung River in Taipei, Taiwan. Photograph: David Chang/EPA

Among the passengers were 31 mainland Chinese tourists, travelling with two local travel agencies: Teyung Group, and Flying Tours.

Lin Liqing, manager of the Teyung Group, said that she had just arrived in Taipei to help with the handling of the incident.

"We are currently heading to the crash site and checking the passenger list with TransAsia Airways," Lin said. She added that the passengers had been sent to eight local hospitals, and that she had not yet been able to visit them.

The manager of Flying Tours said that among 15 mainland Chinese tourists on the plane who were travelling with the agency, he had only confirmed one injured passenger – one of the two infants on board. He had no information on the remaining 14 people.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Taiwanese broadcaster TVBS showed rescuers pulling a toddler alive from the wreckage and rushing him or her to safety.

The chief executive of TransAsia, Chen Xinde, has publicly apologised for the crash.

Wednesday's crash is the second by a TransAsia flight within the past six months — in July 2014, TransAsia flight ATR-72 crashed while attempting to land in the Penghu Islands soon after a typhoon, killing 48 people. The cause of the crash is still under investigation.

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amoy

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ATR 72 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The ATR 72 is a twin-engine turboprop short-haul regional airliner built by the French-Italian aircraft manufacturer ATR. A stretched variant of the ATR 42, the aircraft seats up to 74 passengers in a single-class configuration, and is operated by a two-pilot crew.

read the Accidents and incidents section :mad:
 

tarunraju

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Lol, I've been on that exact bridge during my stay in TW.
 

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