TransAsia Airways flight GE235 carrying mostly Chinese tourists has crashed into Taiwan’s Keelung River, killing at least 23 people.
Dramatic video footage emerged showing the TransAsia Airways plane clipping a bridge as it came down shortly after take-off from a Taipei airport.
The plane, carrying 58 people, has broken up and the fuselage is lying half-submerged in the Keelung River. Rescue efforts are ongoing.
At least 15 people have been pulled out alive, with 20 still missing.
Television footage showed some passengers wading clear of the sunken wreckage and a toddler being pulled out alive by rescuers.
The dramatic moment a toddler was rescued from the sunken wreckage of the jet.
Emergency teams have cut the plane open to gain access, attempting to reach the remaining passengers trapped in the front section of the fuselage.
“At the moment, things don’t look too optimistic,” Wu Jun-hong, a Taipei fire department official coordinating the rescue effort, told reporters.
Wu Jun-hong said the fire department had requested heavy cranes to pull the body of the plane out of the water.
TransAsia said in a statement that one passenger had already been discharged from hospital.
The ATR-72 turbo-prop plane had just taken off from Taipei Songshan Airport and was heading to the Kinmen islands, just off the coast of the south-eastern Chinese city of Xiamen.
It is the second TransAsia ATR-72 to crash in seven months, following an accident last July which killed 48 people and injured 15.
According to a recording played on local media, the final communication from the pilots to air traffic control was: “Mayday, mayday, engine flame out.”
The recording was not immediately verified by aviation officials.
Flight controllers lost contact with the plane at 10:55 local time.
Footage of the plane filmed from inside passing cars showed it banking sharply, hitting a taxi and clipping the bridge before crashing into the river.
“I saw a taxi, probably just meters ahead of me, being hit by one wing of the plane,” an eyewitness told local media.
“The plane was huge and really close to me. I’m still trembling.”
TV footage showed rescuers standing on the tail section of the broken wreckage trying to pull passengers out of the plane with ropes.
The majority of the plane, including the front section of the fuselage and the wings, appeared to be underwater.
The plane’s flight data recorders, also known as black boxes, have been recovered.
TransAsia said it had contacted relatives of all the 22 Taiwanese passengers and was attempting to reach relatives of the Chinese nationals on board.
The company’s chief Chen Xinde offered a “deep apology” in a televised news conference, but said his planes had been “under thorough scrutiny” since mid-2014.
“Both our planes and our flight safety system are following strict regulations, so we also want to know what caused the new plane model to crash, but I don’t want to speculate,” he said.
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A TransAsia Airways plane with 58 people onboard clipped a bridge and crashed into Taiwan’s Keelung River near the capital of Taipei, killing at least 12 people.
The fuselage of flight GE235 is now half-submerged in the Keelung River and lying on its side.
Rescuers on boats have cut it open to gain access to people trapped inside.
Officials say 16 people have suffered injuries, with some taken to hospital. Thirty people remain unaccounted for.
The ATR-72 turbo-prop plane had just taken off from Taipei Songshan Airport and was heading to the outlying Kinmen islands, just off the coast of the south-eastern Chinese city of Xiamen, CNA said.
Flight controllers lost contact with the plane at 10:55 local time.
Footage of the plane filmed from inside passing cars showed it banking sharply, hitting a taxi and clipping the bridge before crashing into the river.
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At least 48 people died after a passenger plane crashed in Taiwan’s Penghu archipelago, amid stormy weather in the area.
The plane, carrying 58 people, crashed into buildings after a failed attempt to land at Magong airport.
The other 10 people on board were hurt. Two French nationals were among the dead, officials said. No crew members are thought to have survived.
Family members were flying to Penghu on Thursday, Taiwan media said.
Minister of Transportation Yeh Kuang-shih and aviation officials also flew to the island to start an investigation into the disaster, Taiwan’s CNA news agency said.
The ATR-72 TransAsia Airways plane crashed as it flew from Taiwan’s southern city of Kaohsiung to Penghu, a popular tourist destination in the Taiwan Strait.
Magong is the main city in Penghu, which consists of a main island and several smaller islands off the west coast of Taiwan.
TransAsia Airways plane, carrying 58 people, crashed into buildings after a failed attempt to land at Magong airport (photo NY Times)
It was Taiwan’s first fatal air crash in more than a decade and came after Typhoon Matmo struck, bringing torrential rain and high wind.
The plane crashed on its second attempt to land at the airport. It lost contact with controllers after telling them it was going around again. The aircraft then came down in Xixi village outside the airport.
Images late on Wednesday night showed firefighters dousing flames at the scene and and using torches to rescue injured passengers.
Five Penghu residents were injured on the ground but by Thursday morning all had been discharged from hospital, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) said.
Official said visibility at the time of the crash was one mile and within acceptable standards for landing, despite the storm.
Airline representative Phoebe Lu told the Associated Press news agency that TransAsia suspected that typhoon weather had caused the crash but was awaiting the results of the investigation.
But Jean Shen, director of the CAA, said nine flights travelled that route between 14:00 and 19:00 on Wednesday.
“The weather reports showed it was totally OK for landing. We can not say for sure what went wrong at this point,” Reuters news agency quoted her as saying.
The transport minister, meanwhile, addressed questions over why the flight was allowed to go ahead.
“Many people were questioning why the plane took off in typhoon weather… according to my understanding the meteorology data showed that it met the aviation safety requirements,” Yeh Kunag-shis said.
TransAsia, a private airline, flies domestic routes in Taiwan and international routes in North and South-East Asia. The airline has apologized and says it will compensate relatives of those on board.
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