plane crash in Taiwan

originally posted by: CiTrus90
I've been looking at the dash cam recording and i came to the opposite conclusion.

To me the left propeller doesn't look correctly feathered.

According to some tech discussion i've been able to find out here, on the ATR-72 there's no auto feather and you have to feather the propeller manually, otherwise chances are the aircraft won't climb at all [on a single engine climb].

Almost all turboprop pilots that I spoke to comments the same, ATR struggles to climb if the dead engine is not feathered.

I think engine failure was the primary cause, but i suspect bad crew management (failure to adopt the correct procedures in a stressful situation) made the difference between a safe landing and the crash that actually happened.

By the way, the plane did not stall right after take off, it actually gained altitude and went down some 5km from the airport.

This is a departure pattern of the same aircraft from Taipei airport:

This one, instead, is the departure pattern of the crashed flight:

Seems clear to me that the crew struggled to keep the aircraft as much as possible over the river in order to avoid crashing on a densely populated area.

The final rolling movement to the left was probably induced by the pilot in order to avoid impacting the building he passed through while in a "quasi-glide". This however, stalled the aircraft without any possibility of recovering it.

The normal procedure for the "operating engine" is to push the prop to full increase (high RPM) and to me the inset pictures appear to show just that. The left prop looks different from the right. It looks like what I would expect it to look with the left engine in-op and feathered.

The roll of the plane is due to either the plane stalling or slow to it's Vmca airspeed. The Vmca is the speed where aerodynamically there is not enough air flowing over the control surfaces to steer the plane with an engine inoperative. On some modern multi engine airplanes the stall speed and the Vmca speeds are very close together...the end results are the same.

a reply to: buddah6

It doesnt look like it feathered to me. It was spinning in the closeup video it looked like.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Sometimes a feathered prop turns if it doesn't get to exactly 90 degrees to the oncoming air. If you look closely the right blades appear skinny or full increase pitch ( producing full power). The left prop appears fatter or in the feathered position (no thrust/less drag). I'm not familiar with the ATR 72 and I understand that it doesn't have an auto-feather system so maybe the crew didn't have the condition lever all the way forward allowing the prop to turn a bit. You have to understand that it's just speculation. I haven't flown anything in 25 years so...

a reply to: buddah6

Sometimes a feathered prop turns if it doesn't get to exactly 90 degrees to the oncoming air.

To me looks like the propeller is still spinning with a lower/non-existent power output.

However, be it non feathered at all or only partially featherd, a mulling propeller generates drag.

BTW i have to correct my previous statement about the absence of an auto-feather mechanism on the ATR-72. They didn't have one till the latest variant, ATR-72-600 entered service. The plane that crashed was an ATR-72-600, so it should have had such a feature on board.

a reply to: CiTrus90

A malfunctioning prop could be the cause. If the auto-feather engaged in flight and the pilots had shut the engine down, you could get something that looks like what we are seeing. I was on a P-3 that this happened to. It yanked the plane almost sideways. The pilots were able to shut the engine down and we continued our flight. Later the air-frame had to be inspected because it over stressed the engine mount.

The ATR 72-600 plane, less than a year old, had one of its engines replaced by Pratt & Whitney Canada last April before it went into service because of a glitch with the original engine, the airline said.


Moments before the plane banked sharply and crashed, one of its pilots told the control tower, "Mayday, mayday, engine flameout," according to an aviation official who asked not to be identified.

"Engine flameout" refers to flames being extinguished in the combustion chamber of the engine, so that it shuts down and no longer drives the propeller. Causes could include a lack of fuel or being struck by volcanic ash or birdstrike."

From yahoo

Some speculation from the news.

originally posted by: smurfy
It looks like the the Taxi driver survived by mere inches, look at the right side of the windscreen with the A pillar cut in two.

This taxi driver was lucky to be in a VW.
Not all car manufacturers would protect the driver from a plane strike.
Fewer would see the driver walk away on his own legs.

Thoughts are with the families of those who were lost in the crash.
Horrid for them.

The grounded ATRs are focusing inspections on the fuel control, engine fuel control and propeller control systems.

If this is true then this could be huge. A whistleblower is reporting that the pilot of the flight reported an engine abnormality on the flight into Taipei, and wrote the problem up, requesting a thorough check of the aircraft. Transasia maintenance personnel reportedly only checked the radio system, so as not to incur penalties for delaying the flight. A company manager denies the allegations.

My money is on the fuel control system. Neither engine was providing power.

It appears now the crew shut down and restarted the wrong engine.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

originally posted by: Zaphod58
If this is true then this could be huge. A whistleblower is reporting that the pilot of the flight reported an engine abnormality on the flight into Taipei, and wrote the problem up, requesting a thorough check of the aircraft. Transasia maintenance personnel reportedly only checked the radio system, so as not to incur penalties for delaying the flight. A company manager denies the allegations.

Zaph, This stuff is not as unusual as you might think. Every airline that I have worked for pressures the pilot to fly when better judgement says no. They do other thing like not paying for weather delays and flying to alternates. I'm not surprised.

There's a book written with all of the unusual mechanical write-ups in the airlines. My favorite story was about a pilot's maintenance squawk as sounding like a midget with a hammer. The mechanic posted in the maintenance log that his repair was to take the hammer away from said midget.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
My money is on the fuel control system. Neither engine was providing power.

It appears now the crew shut down and restarted the wrong engine.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Cockpit Resource Management (CRM) is a weak point in training in eastern airlines. Captains=GOD but only GOD is infallible.

a reply to: buddah6

Oh I know it's not. Saw it in the military too. But it would appear both true and not true. I'm willing to bet they saw something in the left engine which is why they pulled it. They were focused on that engine because of earlier problems.

Do you fly for Buffalo?

I did.

According to some tech discussion i've been able to find out here, on the ATR-72 there's no auto feather and you have to feather the propeller manually

The 72 do have autofeather, activated on low torque, about 21% if memory serves me.
As a complicated system it can and will fail.
The cure is manual feathering.

The crew was heard on the CVR discussing shutting down the left engine. British Midlands all over again.

I thought it peculiar that two different dashcams caught the footage.

Are dashcams that prevalent in Taiwan?

Weird co-inky-dinky for sure...

a reply to: loveguy

Dash cams are becoming more prevalent all over.

a reply to: C46driver

Now, that's flying real airplanes! Flying C-46s in that environment will make you or kill you real quick...congratulations for surviving. I have very little time in multi-engine recips and even less in single engines.