Reports TransAsia plane has crashed and landed into river in Taipei.

Has the cover-up begun?

www.taipeitimes.com...
The Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) yesterday denied that pilots of the TransAsia Airways Flight GE235 that crashed on Wednesday had identified problems with their aircraft’s engines before they took off from the Taipei International Airport ...
... an alleged TransAsia Airways pilot... told the Liberty Times that Flight GE235 pilot Liao Chien-tsung (廖建宗) had identified problems with the engines in the technical log book after the flight returned from Kinmen to Songshan.
The story also quoted the source as saying TransAsia’s ground crew workers feared that a delay in Flight GE235’s departure would cause the company to be penalized by the government, and so they decided to let the flight take off with a problematic engine and conduct a more thorough inspection of the engine when the aircraft returned from Kinmen.

The BBC is now reporting that the FDR indicates BOTH engines failed.

Both Engines failed - BBC

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: pheonix358

That's what most people have concluded. The mayor of Taipei has declared them heroes for missing everything but that small portion of bridge.

Was my problemo on this as well. Coming in to the bridge area wing vertical looks intentional, and certainly would have limited the damage to land objects....

But, like you said , the prop was stopped but not feathered. A non-feathered prop, when the other is at maximum RPM really puts a gyro on the aircraft. The non-feathered dead prop is huge wind resistance, and I can visualize the wing drop and the online prop pulling it through that flip. Without info yet on the flight recorder, pilot error is possible, as you do not want to hit water like you were slicing cheeze. We will see.

a reply to: charlyv

With them now saying both engines were not providing power it makes a lot more sense.

It's starting to look like the right engine suffered a problem, shut down, and the prop feathered. And then the crew shut down and tried to restart the left engine.

Pilot error. They pulled back #1 throttle while climbing, and added power to #2, which was non-functional.

www.flightglobal.com...

The stall warning went off five times, starting at 37 seconds. The CVR caught the crew discussing shutting down the left engine after the initial warning.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
Pilot error. They pulled back #1 throttle while climbing, and added power to #2, which was non-functional.

www.flightglobal.com...

Wow, just wow.
The news feed says that they released the flight data recorder data almost immediately after they initially analyzed it.
Unprecedented. Like you said Zaph, pilot error, totally the opposite of what should have been done.

a reply to: charlyv

I suspect that they had some kind of issue with #1 on the previous flight, predisposing them to react to it failing. So when #2 went they reacted like it was #1.

a reply to: Zaphod58

A repeat of the Dover C-5 crash? Great.

I hope this at least opens some eyes somewhere in the world. A cockpit full of 28,000 hours of experience doesn't mean much in the face of poor CRM and procedures training.

a reply to: justwanttofly

And British Midlands, although that was as much a product of poor training. Same cause though.

Remember an incident in a P3C when taking off out of South Weymouth back in 70's . We lost #1 engine right after rotation, and the pilot had to much throttle on #3 and 4. The plane captain slapped his hand and pulled them back about 1/3. It was scary, as the plane started veering towards the tower. Quick thinking on his part.

a reply to: charlyv

My father had a BUFF that got a load of bad fuel. They landed with four on one side shut down, and all four on the other running rough enough to need borescoping after the flight.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Wow. Tough bird. Things must have been busy in that cockpit!

a reply to: charlyv

The crew had briefed that one more, and they'd hold it level to let the lower deck get out, then the upper deck would go.

a reply to: Zaphod58

In the P3, the pilot wound up putting the plane captain on report for touching his hand. The CO gave the plane captain a service medal, and grounded the pilot for a week.

a reply to: charlyv

Sounds like another BUFF incident. Check ride and somehow the boom of the KC-97 wound up in the cockpit, so the IP punched. Copilot couldn't, both landed safely. IG was questioning the crew about charges on him abandoning the plane. The tail gunner mouthed off to the IG in frustration. They smacked him, and made the IP a maintenance officer.

a reply to: Zaphod58

That, I would love to read about it. Talk about a de-pressurization drill, and likely with a hose spitting volatiles into the cockpit. Hard to imagine dealing with that, especially with what was probably in the bomb bay. Those babies were strategic, and were probably ready for anything the govy wanted to task them with. The real question I would have, is how do you ditch one of these? If you had to bail, what kind of systems would be in place to keep that thing from creating a new crater lake? (perhaps out of a town). I am sure that there would be contingencies, considering their payloads, but holy crap... those guys were flying a bomb.

a reply to: charlyv

From what I understand, the bombs they used to fly with had safety mechanisms that meant they were safed up until the crew actually went through the process of deliberately dropping them. There were at least two instances of BUFFs crashing with nukes onboard but they never exploded.

TransAsia has cancelled up to 90 flights, and required all pilots to pass a written and oral test on emergency procedures. The test will also include a simulator test at a later date.