An aircraft owned by the ROC Aviation Corp (大鵬航空) went missing while conducting aerial photography in Hualien yesterday morning, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) said.
The missing aircraft is a Britten-Norman BN-2 islander. The three people on board were identified as pilot Hsueh Chen-hao (薛晨浩), co-pilot Chang Ming-ching (張明欽) and aerial photographer Chien Yu-hsin (錢煜新).
The National Rescue Command Center and the Republic of China (ROC) Air Force have dispatched flights in an attempt to find the missing plane. As of 7pm yesterday, there was no sign of the aircraft or the three people. The Air Police Squad will resume their searches at 6am today.
Photo: CNA
At some point yesterday, TVBS news erroneously reported that the wreckage of the aircraft had been located along the Batongguan Historic Trail (八通關古道).
Hong Mei-yun (洪美雲), director of the CAA’s air traffic services division, said the plane took off yesterday from the Taipei International Airport (Songshan) at 7:24am. It reached an altitude of 8,000 feet as per instructions from the Taipei Area Control Center.
“The aircraft then requested to stop using instrument flight rules and go by visual rules after it arrived at the zone that was to be photographed,” Hong said. “After they went visual, we maintained communication with them by calling them every 15 minutes.”
Hong said the last communication occurred at 9:14am. There was no reply from the aircraft when air control personnel tried to contact them again 9:29am.
According to Hong, the airline was commissioned by a map-drawing firm to conduct an aerial photography assignment from July 1 through Dec. 31. The route the airline had applied for permission to fly was between Taipei and Hualien, and the aircraft was scheduled to land in the airport in Taitung after finishing the assignment, she said.
Hong said the weather information at Hualien and Taitung airports was reviewed prior to takeoff and that conditions had been found good at both locations.
Visibility at both airports was more than 10km and there were no thick clouds, she said. However, Hong said it was not known if the weather conditions were the same at the locations where the aircraft executed its assignment.
Chang Ling-ti (張羚悌), director of the administration’s flight standards division, said that both Hsueh and Chang were retirees from the Air Force and were very experienced pilots.
He said the aircraft underwent a major inspection in June and passed an airworthiness examination last month.
According to Chang, the aircraft was not equipped with a flight recorder, also known as a black box. The rescuers can only determine the location of the aircraft through the signals sent by the aircraft’s emergency locator transmitter, he said.
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