|
 Miraculously, 15 people survived the crash after the plane lurched
between buildings, clipped an overpass with its port-side wing and
crashed upside down in the shallow water.
Dramatic pictures taken by a motorist and posted on Twitter showed
the plane cartwheeling over the motorway soon after the turboprop
ATR 72-600 aircraft took off in apparently clear weather on a
domestic flight for the island of Kinmen.
"I've never seen anything like this," a volunteer rescuer surnamed
Chen said of the most recent in a series of disasters to hit Asian
carriers in the past 12 months.
Television footage showed survivors wearing life jackets wading and
swimming clear of wreckage. Others, including a young child, were
taken to shore in inflatable boats.
Emergency rescue officials crowded around the partially submerged
fuselage of flight GE235, lying on its side in the river, trying to
help those on board.
Taiwan's civil aviation regulator raised the death toll to 19, with
15 injured and 24 missing.
China said 31 of its tourists were onboard.
 The plane missed apartment buildings by metres, though it was not
clear if that was luck or whether the pilot was aiming for the
river. Footage showed a van skidding to a halt on the damaged
overpass after barely missing the plane's wing, with small pieces of
the aircraft scattered along the road.
The chief executive of TransAsia, Peter Chen, bowed deeply at a
televised news conference as he apologised to passengers and crew.
TransAsia's shares closed down 6.9 percent in heavy trade, its
biggest percentage decline since late 2011.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said his government had offered Taiwan
any help necessary following the crash.
"MAYDAY MAYDAY"
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.
Twin-engined aircraft, however, are usually able to keep flying even
when one engine has failed.
The plane was powered by two Pratt & Whitney PW127M engines. Pratt &
Whitney is part of United Technologies <UTX.N>.
The head of Taiwan's civil aviation authority, Lin Tyh-ming, said
the aircraft last underwent maintenance on Jan. 26. The pilot had
4,916 hours of flying hours under his belt and the co-pilot had
6,922 hours, he said.
Taipei's downtown Songshan airport, the smaller of the city's two
airports, provides mostly domestic flights but also connections to
Japan, China and South Korea.
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A statement from China's Taiwan Affairs Office said 31 of those on
board were tourists from the southeastern city of Xiamen, which lies
close to Taiwan's Kinmen island.
The crash is the latest in a string of mishaps to hit Asian carriers
in the past 12 months. An AirAsia <AIRA.KL> jet bound for Singapore
crashed soon after taking off from the Indonesian city of Surabaya
on Dec. 28, killing all 162 people on board.
Also last year, a Malaysia Airlines <MASM.KL> jet disappeared and
one of its sister planes was downed over Ukraine with a combined
loss of 537 lives.
TransAsia is Taiwan's third-largest carrier. One of its ATR 72-500
planes crashed while trying to land at Penghu Island last July,
killing 48 of the 58 passengers and crew on board.
Taiwan has had a poor aviation safety record in recent years,
including the disintegration of a China Airlines <2610.TW> 747 on a
flight from Taipei to Hong Kong in 2002, killing 225.
In 2000, a Singapore Airlines jetliner taking off for Los Angeles
during a storm hit construction equipment on the runway, killing
dozens.
The plane involved in Wednesday's mishap was among the first of the
ATR 72-600s, the latest variant of the turboprop aircraft, that
TransAsia received in 2014 as part of an order of eight aircraft two
years earlier.
The 72-seat aircraft are mainly used to connect the capital, Taipei,
with smaller cities and islands.
ATR is a joint venture between Airbus <AIR.PA> and Alenia Aermacchi,
a subsidiary of Italy's Finmeccanica <SIFI.MI>.
(Additional reporting by Siva Govindasamy in SINGAPORE and Ben
Blanchard in HONG KONG; Editing by Paul Tait and Nick Macfie)
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