Taiwan airline sorry for crash
Magong/ Xixi( Taiwan), July 25: Taiwan’s TransAsia Airways ran an apology on the front pages of five major newspapers Friday, pledging to shoulder the “utmost responsibility” after 48 people died when one of its planes crashed in stormy weather.
It came after grieving relatives confronted airline chairman Vincent Lin as he was paying respects to the dead at a funeral home, and as it emerged that 10- year- old survivor battling burn injuries had been rescued at great risk by two fellow passengers. The domestic flight from Kaohsiung in Taiwan’s southwest was carrying 54 passengers and four crew when it plunged into houses in Magong in the Penghu islands Wednesday, leaving just 10 survivors, some of them badly injured. Two French medical students were among the dead. “TransAsia and its staff express our deepest condolences for those who died on Flight GE222 and offer our apologies to the relatives and the injured,” it said in a statement covering half the front page of five newspa- pers. “TransAsia pledges to the deceased, the survivors and their relatives as well as Penghu residents who were injured to shoulder the utmost responsibility and make every effort to deal with the aftermath and provide the best compensation.”
The 10 survivors of Taiwan’s worst air disaster in more than a decade include a 34- year- old woman who called her father after scrambling from the wreckage and seeking help at a nearby home. Hung Yu- ting escaped through a hole in the fuselage that opened up after the plane ploughed into homes Wednesday while attempting to land on the outlying resort island of Penghu, killing 48 people.
“She called me on the phone to say the plane had crashed and exploded but that she had already crawled out and I should come right away to get her,” said Hung's father, Hung Chang- ming, who lives just a few hundred meters from the crash site. Hung rushed to the scene, but his daughter had already been taken away by rescuers.