TransAsia Airways pilots undergo testing following crash

TransAsia Airways says all 71 of its ATR pilots have begun proficiency tests after one of the airline's planes crashed into a river in Taiwan, killing at least 36 people.

The airline said it has cancelled 90 flights in the next three days to accommodate the requirement by the Civil Aeronautics Administration that its pilots be retested.

Preliminary investigations indicate the pilots of Wednesday’s crash flight shut off a running engine on the ATR 72 after its other engine went idle, and aviation experts say the move could have been a mistake.

Local prosecutors have said they would be looking into the possibility of “professional error”.

The Civil Aeronautics Administration said this morning that seven people from the 58 on board remain missing. Fifteen people survived after the plane went into a river in the capital Taipei.

One of the two engines on TransAsia Airways Flight 235 went idle 37 seconds after take-off, and the pilots apparently shut off the other before making a futile attempt to restart it.

Shut down

It was unclear why the second engine was shut down as the plane was capable of flying with one engine.

The accident was captured in a dramatic dashboard camera video that showed the ATR 72 turboprop plane banking steeply and scraping a highway flyover before plunging into the Keelung River.

The details on the engines were presented at a news conference in Taipei by aviation safety council executive director Thomas Wang as preliminary findings from the flight data recorder.

He said the plane’s right engine triggered an alarm 37 seconds after take-off. However, he said the data showed it had not shut down, or “flamed out” as the pilot told the control tower, but rather moved into idle mode, with no change in the oil pressure.

Then, 46 seconds later, the left engine was shut down, apparently by one of the pilots, so that neither engine was producing any power. A restart was attempted, but the plane crashed 72 seconds later.

The pilot, who died in the crash, had 4,900 hours of flying experience, said Lin Chih-ming of the civil aeronautics administration.

PA