The Aviation Safety Council yesterday revealed preliminary information from the flight data recorder (FDR) and cockpit voice recorder of the crashed TransAsia Airways Flight GE235, showing that the pilots may have mistakenly turned off the engine that could have kept it airborne.
Council executive director Thomas Wang (王興中) said that the master warning for the No. 2 engine was triggered about 37 seconds after takeoff, which indicated that the engine had flamed out. During that time, the airplane was flying at an altitude of 457m, he said.
Wang also said that the propellers of the No. 2 engine went into the feathered mode after the flame-out signal. The auto-feather system is activated when the power of the engine becomes insufficient to produce the thrust, he said, adding that the system helps reduce drag during an engine failure.
Photo: EPA
“Even though the flame-out alarm went off, the engine did not actually flame out and was still running,” Wang said, adding that the aircraft’s dashboard should have informed the pilot that it was the No. 2 engine that had malfunctioned.
Despite the problem with the No. 2 engine, Wang said that the flight crew did not shut it down, but decided to increase its throttle.
Wang said that although there was no sign of abnormality with the No. 1 engine, the flight crew manually turned it off when the airplane climbed to 488m, leading that engine to go into feathered mode as well.
Photo: Liao Chen-hui, Taipei Times
The flight crew later tried to restart the No. 1 engine, but did not have enough time to power the engine back into full operation, Wang said.
The data further showed that the aircraft had sounded a stall warning five times before the FDR stopped recording.
After the third stall warning, the flight crew contacted the control tower and called out: “Mayday, Mayday, engine flame-out.”
The council also showed the data plot from the FDR of the engines, which indicated that both engines had operated normally before the No. 2 engine went into feathered mode.
As to what led to the failure of the No. 2 engine and why the flight crew decided to turn off the No. 1 engine following a brief discussion, Wang said that these questions could only be answered after further investigation.
Previously, media reports had speculated that the problem could be with the No. 1 engine, as the company had replaced it twice since it acquired the aircraft from the French manufacturer.
Yann Torres, a representative from the French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation, also attended the press conference and confirmed that the ATR 72-600 airplanes are able to operate with one engine, even during take-off.
Meanwhile, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) said that all pilots operating ATR 72 models are to be retrained.
Clark Lin (林俊良), director of the administration’s flight standards division, said that the airline has 71 pilots trained to fly ATR 72 planes, adding that they would be required to take an oral test on operating the aircraft.
The test would be administered over four days, beginning today, he said.
Lin said that pilots could still fly the airplanes before they take the test, because they are qualified pilots.
However, they must finish the test within four days and would be asked to be requalified as pilots if they fail the test, Lin said.
The pilots would later be asked to operate a flight simulator as well.
CAA statistics showed that of five TransAsia Airways incidents between 2010 and last year that involved problems with an engine, two of them were attributed to human error.
The combined effect of the monsoon, the outer rim of Typhoon Fengshen and a low-pressure system is expected to bring significant rainfall this week to various parts of the nation, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The heaviest rain is expected to occur today and tomorrow, with torrential rain expected in Keelung’s north coast, Yilan and the mountainous regions of Taipei and New Taipei City, the CWA said. Rivers could rise rapidly, and residents should stay away from riverbanks and avoid going to the mountains or engaging in water activities, it said. Scattered showers are expected today in central and
COOPERATION: Taiwan is aligning closely with US strategic objectives on various matters, including China’s rare earths restrictions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Taiwan could deal with China’s tightened export controls on rare earth metals by turning to “urban mining,” a researcher said yesterday. Rare earth metals, which are used in semiconductors and other electronic components, could be recovered from industrial or electronic waste to reduce reliance on imports, National Cheng Kung University Department of Resources Engineering professor Lee Cheng-han (李政翰) said. Despite their name, rare earth elements are not actually rare — their abundance in the Earth’s crust is relatively high, but they are dispersed, making extraction and refining energy-intensive and environmentally damaging, he said, adding that many countries have opted to
FORCED LABOR: A US court listed three Taiwanese and nine firms based in Taiwan in its indictment, with eight of the companies registered at the same address Nine companies registered in Taiwan, as well as three Taiwanese, on Tuesday were named by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) as a result of a US federal court indictment. The indictment unsealed at the federal court in Brooklyn, New York, said that Chen Zhi (陳志), a dual Cambodian-British national, is being indicted for fraud conspiracy, money laundering and overseeing Prince Holding Group’s forced-labor scam camps in Cambodia. At its peak, the company allegedly made US$30 million per day, court documents showed. The US government has seized Chen’s noncustodial wallet, which contains
SUPPLY CHAIN: Taiwan’s advantages in the drone industry include rapid production capacity that is independent of Chinese-made parts, the economic ministry said The Executive Yuan yesterday approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion (US$1.44 billion) into domestic production of uncrewed aerial vehicles over the next six years, bringing Taiwan’s output value to more than NT$40 billion by 2030 and making the nation Asia’s democratic hub for the drone supply chain. The proposed budget has NT$33.8 billion in new allocations and NT$10.43 billion in existing funds, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said. Under the new development program, the public sector would purchase nearly 100,000 drones, of which 50,898 would be for civil and government use, while 48,750 would be for national defense, it said. The Ministry of