Dramatic footage captured by dash cameras the other day show how a TransAsia Airways Corporate plane carrying 58 people crashes minutes after it took off Wednesday morning, careening over Taipei, Taiwan’s capital city. It’s the second TransAsia tragic accident in seven months and local authorities are eagerly looking for reasons the aircraft crashed, especially considering that reports suggest it was a new plane.
Even though investigation is ongoing, it appears at least 13 people have lost their lives. According to the Taiwanese airline 28 people were injured in the fiery accident while the rest of the people on the plane were still missing. An earlier statement of the Civil Aeronautics Administration said 31 Chinese nationals were on board and five cabin crew. Investigators have already found the black-box data recorders.
“We are also very eager to find out why this happened to such a new aircraft,” TransAsia Chief Executive Peter Chen said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. Reports are ATR-72 turboprop - a twin-engine short-haul regional airliner built by the French-Italian aircraft maker ATR - took off from Taipei’s Songshan Airport at 10:53 a.m. on Wednesday and crashed en route to the outlying island of Kinmen.
Investigators are quite surprised the accident happened, since it would seem weather conditions were permissible for flights at the moment of takeoff. The last maintenance took place on January 26 and the pilot had 4,916 hours of flight time while the co-pilot has 6,922 hours.
Be advised, the images below might have an emotional impact!
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