TransAsia Airways Plane Crash Kills 48 Onboard And Injures 11

Investigators are examining wreckage and flight data recorders for clues into a plane crash on a Taiwanese island that killed 48 people. Stormy weather and low visibility are suspected as factors in Wednesday's crash of the twin propeller ATR-72 operated by TransAsia Airways.

Local media reported Friday that the plane's cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder had been sent to the main island of Taiwan for analysis. Investigators searched for other clues at the crash site on the island of Penghu in the Taiwan Strait west of the capital Taipei.

The airline's chairman Vincent Lin visited grieving relatives gathered at a local funeral home and said the company would do all it could to aid them in their suffering.

The TransAsia Airways twin turboprop was flying from the southern Taiwan city of Kaohsiung, on the main island, to Magong on the Penghu Islands in rain and heavy winds as Typhoon Matmo passed through the region. Gusts approaching 40 miles per hour were reported.

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The domestic flight crashed near Magong airport on the outlying Penghu island, reports said. There were a total of 54 passengers and four crew on board, Taiwan's CNA news agency reported.

The majority of the 54 passengers on board the ATR-72, a twin-engine turboprop, were from the island. Two passengers were French.

The agency previously said that 51 were feared killed, citing fire department officials. "It's chaotic [at] the scene," Jean Shen, director of the Civil Aeronautics Administration, told Reuters news agency.

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The plane made one aborted effort to land in heavy rain and winds of roughly 30mph, in the aftermath of Typhoon Matmo, which passed over the island a day earlier. As it made its second attempt it lost contact with the control tower and fell almost 100ft into two houses in the neighbouring village of Xixi, roughly 700ft away from the north end of the runway.

“I heard a huge crash,” said one villager in Xixi, named as Mr Wang, on Taiwanese television. “At first I thought it was thunder but then I smelt gas. Then I saw the fire outside and there were passengers covered in blood crawling from the plane. Then there was a second explosion.”

Another villager, named Mr Chen, also said he had seen passengers coming out of the wreckage and that one of the plane’s propellers had landed on his doorstep. There were no immediate reports of casualties in the village.

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One unnamed man interviewed on television at the local hospital said his daughter had called him shortly after the crash to tell him what had happened. “I only live two minutes from where the plane crashed,” he said. “She said the plane had exploded but she had crawled out. She asked me to come and get her. When I got there, they were putting out the fire and my daughter had been taken to hospital. She is in a stable condition but has some burns. I could make out the shape of a plane, but it was all black,” he added.

"From the crash site we sent 11 people to hospital with injuries. A few empty apartment buildings adjacent to the runway caught fire, but no-one was inside at the time and the fire was extinguished."

TransAsia’s general manager, Hsu Yi-tsung, appeared before reporters in Taipei and bowed in apology for the crash. Local television showed one woman, Hsu Yu-jie, a 34-year-old employee of the Penghu County accounting and statistics department, collapsing in tears as airline personnel tried to console her. “My daughter,” she said, sobbing.

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The two pilots of the plane were experienced. Captain Li Yiliang, 60, a former pilot in the Taiwanese air force, had a reported 22,000 hours of flying time.

Typhoon Matmo, packing sustained winds of 85 mph, was approaching Taiwan and forecast to hit its east-central coast Wednesday morning. Torrential rains, exceeding 7.8 inches over 24 hours, were forecast for virtually the entire island. Some areas of Taiwan are mountainous and prone to mudslides.

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However, an official at the Civil Aeronautics Administration told Reuters that bad weather at the time of the crash did not exceed international regulations for landing. Typhoon Matmo had caused many flights to be cancelled but the land warning was lifted around 17:30 local time, around the time the plane took off, the BBC's Cindy Sui in Taipei reports.

The ATR-72, which is used for short-haul domestic flights, has a patchy safety record. Last October, Lao Airlines Flight 301 crashed into the Mekong river, killing all 49 on board. In February 2013, an Alitalia ATR-72 crashed on landing in Rome, injuring 16. In April 2012, UTair Flight 120 crashed after take-off in Western Siberia killing 33 people.

TransAsia has had at least one previous fatal crash with an ATR. In 2002, an ATR 72-200 freight aircraft with two pilots crashed into the sea near the Penghu Islands while traveling between Taipei and Macau. Severe icing was believed to be the cause of that crash.

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