Final moments revealed of the Taiwan airliner that crashed, killing 48
Cockpit voice recorder tapes suggests crew had no clear idea where they were as they attempted to land in the wake of a typhoon
Details have been released of the final moments of the TransAsia Airways flight that crashed in Taiwan in July, killing 48 people.
Transcripts of conversations taped on the cockpit voice recorder show the crew had no clear idea where they were as the aircraft approached the airport in Penghu in bad weather in the wake of a typhoon, an initial report released by the Aviation Safety Council said.
The crew only began to realise something was wrong when they were about 53 metres off the ground, the tapes revealed.
The flight was flying from Kaohsiung to the islands of Penghu off the western coast of Taiwan on July 23, with 58 passengers and crew on board.
The captain is heard asking his first officer, “Have you seen the runway yet?”, as the aircraft had descended to an altitude of about 53 metres, according to details of the report posted on the council’s website.
Nine seconds later the first officer answered “No”.
The captain repeated “No” a second later and two seconds after that the first officer repeated again “No, sir”.
By then the aircraft was less than 22 metres above the ground.
“Both crew members called out ‘go around’ and the throttle was levered up,” the report said.
“At 1906 hours both flight recorders stopped recording,” the report said.
The control tower at Magong Airport in Penghu said at the time it had received a request from the crashed flight to make a “go-around” at 7.06pm, but the flight disappeared from radar screens shortly afterwards.
The aircraft crashed in the village of Xixi, about 1 km northeast of the airport.
Ten people on the aircraft were also injured. Five residents on the ground also suffered minor injuries.
At least four flights had abandoned attempts to land at the airport that day because of the bad weather.
Conditions were challenging, but within the prescribed safety limits, the aviation authority said after the crash.
