PLANE FLIPS AFTER CLIPPING BRIDGE: SOME SURVIVORS
A TRANSASIA AIRWAYS plane with 58 passengers and crew on board cartwheeled into a river shortly after taking off from a downtown Taipei airport yesterday, killing at least 16 people and leaving about a dozen missing.
As many as 28 people appeared to have miraculously survived after the plane lurched sickeningly between buildings, clipped an overpass with its port-side wing and crashed upside down in the shallow river.
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.
Television footage showed survivors wearing life jackets wading and swimming clear of wreckage. Others, including a young child, were taken to shore by rescuers.
Emergency rescue officials in inflatable boats crowded around the partly submerged fuselage, lying on its side in the river, trying to help those on board.
Wu Chunhong, acting director of the Taipei City Fire Department, said 16 people had been killed. That left 14 still unaccounted for.
Thirty-one mainland Chinese were among those on board.
The plane appeared to miss apartment buildings by metres. 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 last communication from one of the 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.