UP NEXT

03

A TransAsia Airways flight crashed into a Taipei river shortly after takeoff Wednesday with 58 passengers on board. Dashcam footage from cars on a bridge beside the river captured the plane going down. Dozens were either killed or missing.
VPC

BEIJING — At least 25 people died but 15 survived a spectacular crash caught on video of a TransAsia Airways flight that clipped its wing on a bridge after takeoff from the Taiwanese capital Taipei and crashed into a nearby river.

Taiwanese rescuers used a massive crane to hoist the ATR 72-600 propjet from the shallow river after survivors were brought to safety on rubber rafts or scrambled to the river bank on their own. Eighteen people remained missing hours after the crash.

Dramatic dashcam footage from a vehicle on an elevated highway shows the plane banked sharply to its left after taking off, just missing apartment buildings. Its left wing clipped the side of the highway. A taxi on the bridge was hit as the plane crashed into the river, injuring the driver, Taiwan’s TVBS news reported.

Rescuers rushed to the scene of the crash, where a large portion of the wrecked fuselage jutted out of the shallow Keelung River with one wing missing. Hours later, emergency personnel in rubber dinghies crowded around what remained of the plane.

At the crash scene, local TV footage showed a small child, one of two children on board, sitting upright in a rescue dinghy beside the crashed plane. Two adults, with blood on their faces from head wounds, managed to walk up the bank.

UP NEXT

03

A plane from Taiwan with 58 people aboard clipped a bridge shortly after takeoff and careened into a river Wednesday. Early reports say at least 8 people are known dead and at least two dozen were rescued. (Feb. 4)
AP

Wu Jun-Hong, a Taipei Fire Department official coordinating the rescue, said the 20 still missing as night fell in Taiwan are either still in the wreckage or were pulled downriver. « At the moment, things don’t look too optimistic, » Wu told reporters at the scene. « Those in the front of the plane are likely to have lost their lives. »

UP NEXT

03

Video from a driver’s dash camera captures the moment a turboprop plane with 58 people on board crashes into a Taipei river. Rough cut. (No reporter narration)
Video provided by Reuters
Newslook

Wednesday’s flight took off from Taipei’s downtown Sungshan Airport. Taiwan’s Civil Aeronautics Administration described the ATR72-600 model as its best plane and said the pilot had 4,900 hours of flying experience.

The plane’s black boxes were recovered and TV footage showed them in what appeared to be decent condition. Based on a recording of communications between the cockpit and the control tower, the pilot called out « mayday » three times shortly after takeoff, the CAA said. The recording did not provide any other clues about the cause of the crash.

The agency is assessing whether to ground other ATR 72-600 aircraft in Taiwan, said its director-general, Lin Zhiming.

The fate of pilot Liao Jianzong was not immediately known. Taiwan’s Now News website reported he had worked hard to achieve his position. Born into a poor family, his parents sold clothes at a street stall. After serving in the army, Liao studied English diligently to land a commercial airline job.

More than half of the 58 people aboard TransAsia Airways Flight GE235 en route to the outlying Taiwan-controlled Kinmen islands were from China, and the death toll was expected to rise.

Relatives and friends on Kinmen, an island close to China, gathered at the airport to await news.

Thirty-one passengers were tourists from Xiamen, a nearby Chinese coastal city, who were traveling as two tour groups organized by two Xiamen travel agencies. One of the mainland tour groups was originally booked on a later flight to Kinmen, but changed to the ill-fated flight Wednesday morning, reported CNA, Taiwan’s state news agency.

After decades of rivalry and tense relations across the Taiwan Straits, Taipei has relaxed restrictions on mainland tourists in recent years, leading to a boom in visitors from China.

It was the second of TransAsia’s French-made ATR 72 to crash in the past year. Last July, a flight crashed while attempting to land on the island of Penghu off Taiwan’s coast, killing 48 people and injuring another 10. Stormy weather and low visibility were suspected as factors in that crash.

Eversley reported from New York. Contributing: John Bacon, USA TODAY; Associated Press