Taiwan authorities launched an investigation on Thursday into the crash of a TransAsia Airways turboprop plane in which 48 people were killed with the weather expected to be a factor in the inquiry.
The plane, a 70-seat ATR 72, crashed on Wednesday evening near the runway while trying to land on the small island of Penghu, west of Taiwan island, after a typhoon had passed earlier in the day.
The aircraft had 54 passengers and four crew on board. Two of the dead were French, the French foreign ministry said, and 10 people were injured and taken to hospital. The leaders of rivals China and Taiwan both offered their condolences over the deaths.
Taiwan's civil aviation authorities said the weather had been suitable for flying. "There were nine flights on the same route between 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. yesterday. Only the TransAsia flight crashed," said Jean Shen, director of the Civil Aeronautics Administration.
"The weather reports showed it was totally OK for landing," she said, adding that authorities were not ruling anything out. "We can not say for sure what went wrong at this point. The flight safety committee has opened an investigation." Both black boxes had been found and officials would begin examining them later in the day, she said.
Alison Kao, a TransAsia spokeswoman, said the weather could have been a factor but the airline was not jumping to any conclusions before the investigation.
The aircraft took off from the southern Taiwan city of Kaohsiung, heading for Makong airport in the Penghu islands, but it crashed just short of the runway on its second attempt to land during a thunder storm. The islands are also known as the Pescadores.
(Published by Reuters – July 24, 2014)