Two investigators from the French Air Accident Investigation Bureau joined the search yesterday for the black boxes of the downed TransAsia Airways cargo aircraft near Penghu's Makung.
According to the Executive Yuan's Aviation Safety Council (ASC), the French investigators used the global positioning system to detect the underwater locator beacons that the black boxes were equipped with.
The French-built ATR-72 plane, with two pilots on board, crashed into the sea near Penghu after taking off from Taipei en route to Macau early Saturday morning.
Rescue teams continue to search for the two pilots, Pan Teh-chung (潘德宗) and Liu Ching-hai (劉清海).
There were no other passengers or crew on board.
Kay Yong (戎凱), managing director of ASC, said the cause of the air crash is still under investigation.
"We need to recover the black boxes to answer all the questions about the cause of the crash," Yong said.
"Before the black boxes are found, ASC will not come to any conclusion on the cause of the air crash," Yong said.
"At the present point, all speculations about the cause of the air crash are meaningless," Yong said.
A navy minesweeper detected signals sent out by the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder of the cargo plane near Penghu's West Island Sunday morning.
The location of the black boxes was 10.9km southwest of West Island and 60.5m beneath the sea surface, according to Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA).
Billy Chang
"The navy did not hide anything," Chang said.
Meanwhile, Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Ling-san
"On Sunday night, I phoned Minister of National Defense Tan Yao-ming
"The CAA has banned all ships from approaching the area where the black boxes were located," Lin said.
Huang Tai-ping
"But we will continue to search for the pilots. We will not give up," Huang said.
Liu Tsan-ming
"I hope fishermen can also help us find my brother," said Liu Tsan-ming, who also expressed gratitude for the navy's help in the rescue effort.
However, wind and waves around the Penghu Islands are getting stronger with the approach of a cold front. Bad weather could hinder the recovery work of the black boxes, according to GMPA.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift