TransAsia Airways Flight 235

TransAsia Airways Flight 235 was a TransAsia Airways domestic flight from Taipei to Kinmen (Quemoy), Taiwan. On 4 February 2015, the aircraft serving the flight, a ten month old A.T.R 72-600, crashed into the Keelung River shortly after takeoff from Taipei Songshan Airport, 5.4 km (3.4 mi; 2.9 nmi) to the east of Songshan in Taiwan. The aircraft had 53 passengers and five crew on board; there were 15 survivors.

Two minutes after takeoff, the pilots reported an engine flameout. Flight 235 climbed to a maximum height of 1,510 feet (460 m), then descended. The other engine, still working, was shut down mistakenly. Immediately before crashing into the river, it banked sharply left and clipped a taxi travelling west on the Huandong Viaduct (causing two more injuries), then the video itself, with its left wing.

Flight 235 was the second fatal accident involving a TransAsia Airways ATR aircraft within seven months: Flight 222 had crashed on 23 July 2014, killing 48 of the 58 onboard.

Flight
Flight 235 departed Taipei Songshan Airport at 10:52 Taiwan time (02:52 UTC), for its destination of Kinmen Airport, with 53 passengers and five crew members on board. Shortly after take-off, a fault in the auto-feather unit of the number 2 engine caused the automatic take-off power control system to auto-feather that engine. The flight crew misdiagnosed the problem, and shut down the still-functioning number 1 engine. The aircraft reached an altitude of 1,630 feet (500 m) and then began descending until it crashed.

Firing The Bridge
The last pilot communication to air traffic control was: "Mayday, mayday, engine flameout." At 10:55, the aircraft crashed into the Keelung River, on the border of Nangang District of Taipei and Xizhi District of New Taipei.

Recorded
The crash was recorded by dashcams in several cars travelling west along the elevated Huandong Viaduct next to the river. The aircraft, flying level, first cleared an apartment building. Then it rolled sharply, at nearly a 90-degree bank angle, left wing down. As the aircraft flew low over the elevated viaduct, its left wingtip struck the front of a 2015 Volkswagen Caddy taxi travelling west on the viaduct, and the outboard section of the wing was torn off when it struck the concrete guardrail at the edge of the viaduct. The aircraft continued its roll and struck the water upside down, breaking into two main pieces. The collision with the taxi and the viaduct was captured in footage from a dashcam in a car travelling a short distance behind the taxi, and debris from the plane's wing and pieces of the viaduct's guardrail were thrown across the road surface. Two people in the taxi suffered minor injuries.

At the time of the accident, no adverse weather phenomena were observed. At 11:00, the cloud base at songshan was about 1,500 feet (460 m), the visibility was unlimited, and a light breeze was blowing from the east at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph). The temperature was 16 °C (61 °F)

Aircraft
The aircraft involved in the accident was an ATR 72-600 twin turboprop, registration B-22816, MSN1141. It first flew on 28 March 2014, and was delivered to TransAsia Airways on 15 April 2014. Both Pratt & Whitney Canada PW127M engines were replaced due to technical issues on April 19, 2014 and the left engine was replaced again in August.

Passengers And Crew
The passenger manifest was composed of 49 adults and four children. Thirty-one passengers were Chinese, many were visitors from Xiamen on a six-day tour of Taiwan. The remaining 22 passengers were Taiwanese.

The flight crew consisted of two pilots, both ranked as captains; the captain was Liao Chien-tsung, 42, with a total of 4,914 flight hours (including 3,401 hours on the ATR 72) and the co-pilot was Liu Tze-chung, 45, with a total of 6,922 flight hours, including 5,314 hours on the ATR 72. There was also an observer, Hung Ping-chung, 63, seated in the cockpit jump seat, who had a total of 16,121 flight hours, 6,482 of them on the ATR 72. There were also two flight attendants as cabin crew. All crew members were Taiwanese citizens; the co-pilot was a dual New Zealand–Taiwanese citizen.