Interesting how little coverage this has got on pprune.
Perhaps that’s just a reflection of very few people on that forum being familiar with Penghu.
Air Algeria : 98 replies
Tranasia : 24
So it appears a plane just before the Transasia plane tried to land also had an aborted landing and went back to Kaoshiung.
Some newspapers have it that Transasia didn’t cancel their flights in order to take on passengers from cancelled flights from other airlines.
Transasia also have a policy of making workers work on publicly declared typhoon holidays. This sends a message to staff. The wrong message.
Finally it seems possible the Transasia flight was circling for up to one hour after the first landing attempt INSTEAD of heading back to Kaoshiung. Flight time to Kaoshiung is only 25 mins. Did the pilot receive instructions to make the landing? Did he run out of fuel to follow up the back-up plan to go back to Kaoshiung? What happened there?
Then add in lax government policy and lack of equipment at Penghu…recipe for disaster.
Yep, seems like there is more to this now than just a go-around in bad weather. There seem to be a lot of non-technical, non-crew related issues which must have become a big factor in making the crew behave as they did on the night. Let’s just hope that if the company and it’s policies are at fault, Transasia is held accountable and policies are introduced at government level to change the way the domestic airline industry in Taiwan operates.
What I would hate to see after all this is the finger pointed at the pilots - always an easy get out to blame people who have no way to defend themselves and present their side of the story.
Was this in any of the regular news reports?
That’s what I heard, I haven’t seen the actual report so take it at face value.
Interesting (i think):
Source: taiwannews.com.tw/etn/news_c … id=2535194
(That would be about one accident on average every 20 months… and we all missed that?)
Wikipedia’s page on TransAsia shows 3 accidents:
[quote][…] cargo flight 791, an ATR 72-200, crashed due to icing on December 21, 2002, during a flight from Taipei to Macau […]
[…] flight 543, an Airbus A321 (B-22603) collided with a truck upon landing at Tainan Airport […]
[…] On July 23, 2014, TransAsia Airways Flight 222, an ATR-72-500 […] crashed near Magong Airport on Penghu Island [/quote]
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransAsia_Airways
Wikipedia’s page on the ATR-72 shows 2 previous accidents in Taiwan:
[quote]On 30 January 1995, TransAsia Airways (TNA) flight ??,an ATR 72, crashed during flight from Penghu to Taipei. Four crew members were killed.
On 21 December 2002, TransAsia Airways (TNA) cargo flight 791, an ATR 72–200, crashed due to icing during flight from Taipei to Macau. Both crew members were killed. […]
On 23 July 2014, TransAsia Airways Flight 222, an ATR 72-500 crashed into hard ground whilst attempting an emergency landing on approach to Magong […][/quote]
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATR_72
(No idea where the writer got “emergency landing” from - a go-around after an aborted landing is not typically called “emergency landing”.)
So who’s got the wrong information?
I wouldn’t be surprised of some airplane had returned.
But it’s also interesting that none of the reports we’ve seen so far mention this.
Can you give us any additional information about the source of this particular news item?
What is coming up a lot in local news are “wind shear” and “no Dopler radar”. At least more often than feng shui.
aviation-safety.net/wikibase/dbl … Country=Bt
list of incidents/accidents
FAIK the Airbus that landed on a truck while landing in Tainan resulted in no deaths or injuries of passengers or crew. It was the tower’s fault to allow vehicles on runway while airport was still active.
The plane was late and the tower thought the airport was closed, not knowing the transasia airbus was still coming in. The truck was smashed as it was on the runway making an inspection. The crew didn’t see it as it was night.
The plane was written off. I think the truck driver was hurt.
The landing over run in Taipei Songshan of another airbus also resulted in no injuries and the plane lived to fly again.
Improper setting of the throttles on landing meant the plane was not set up to stop in time. A very similar accident occurred in the phillippines to another airbus. And later a TAM Airbus crashed with all loss of life under a similar set of circumstances.
The two ATR lost, one was on a cargo flight to Macau and crashed into the sea due to icing. Icing had been a real problem for many aTR in Europe until they supposedly solved the problem with a revamp of the anti icing equipment.
Unlike jets, turboprops often fly right at altitudes where icing can be a real problem.
One other ATR on a repositioning flight was flying VFR at night into SongShan from Penghu (IIRC near Chinese New Year) and mistook a highway in Taoyuan for the runway at Songshan and crashed. All 4 crew died. Situational awareness issue.
Commercial planes should NEVER fly VFR in the first place.
Commercial aircraft have excellent weather radar onboard that allows pilots to see up to hundreds of miles ahead (see precipitation ). The tower knew a T-Storm was overhead and had been for much of the day. The airport should have been closed.
T-Storm near runways are especially dangerous because of windshear. Headwinds can suddenly become tailwinds and loss of lift at inopportune times have led to many crashes.
There is a strong possibility the aircraft experienced a loss of lift situation (if not mechanical failure ) and crashed upon its second attempt at landing.
The airport should have been closed !!
Have to check again but this aircraft was 810? IF so it had a serious engine fire and caused the plane to return to SongShan on a flight to Penghu once before.
Confirming that the “news” in the taiwannews.com, hiding behind “media reports” is total BS - scare mongering? trying to hurt the company?
(Have sent them a note by email - let’s see whether they correct that…)
Wonder if there is any truth about the pilot requesting runway 02 with ILS and being put on hold as that is a military runway? Then proceeding as planned to runway 20 and crashing?
Since the pilot is already dead and Transasia Airlines needs to come up with something to save its reputation, you can bet your money that the dead pilot is going to end up as the convenient “goat”. All parties involved are not really interested in the truth, they will hide lots of real info and concoct something and throw the blame conveniently on the dead goat and move on. This is Taiwan for you.
Two French nationals died and the French aviation investigators are on scene. I think the truth will be known.
7 French, one Canadian -seems the plane’s Canadian built. Also, the parents of one of the French victims arrived to retrieve the body.
IIRC the ATR are French/Italian (Airbus/ Alenia) co-op project.
The CAnadian may just be under the employ of Airbus or Alenia.
[quote=“tommy525”]IIRC the ATR are French/Italian (Airbus/ Alenia) co-op project.
The Canadian may just be under the employ of Airbus or Alenia.[/quote]
Well, you know how everyone likes to blame Canadians for everything. 
For anybody interested in learning more about the ATR-72, here is a detailed comparison of this aircraft type with the Bombardier Q400:
An intial report into this crash was released a few weeks back by the Aviation Safety Council.
Taipei Times, and quoted below.
Bloomberg has more detail.
[quote]In the report, the council did not try to explain the cause of the accident, but rather gave details of the circumstances leading up to the crash at 7:06pm. According to the council, a cloud band with thunderstorms approached Magong Airport at about 7pm, just as the aricraft was heading toward it as it was thought there was an opening in the weather.
Visibility readings abruptly dropped below 1,600m, the minimum standard for landings at the airport.
Airport runway instruments showed runway visual range — the distance over which a pilot of an aircraft on the centerline of the runway can see the runway surface — plummeting to 600m at 7:02pm and close to 400m just before the crash, the report said. However, as the weather changed, there was some debate among air traffic controllers over whether the data were accurate, and they decided not to pass on the information to the pilots of the ill-fated aircraft, instead giving them the green light to land at 7:03pm.
At the same time, the control tower decided to record visibility manually, but that took time and did not yield a visibility reading of 800m until 7:10pm.
By then it was too late.[/quote]
Nice of them not to do so, given the visibility issues at the time.