The Aviation Safety Council yesterday revealed preliminary information from the flight data recorder (FDR) and cockpit voice recorder of the crashed TransAsia Airways Flight GE235, showing that the pilots may have mistakenly turned off the engine that could have kept it airborne.
Council executive director Thomas Wang (王興中) said that the master warning for the No. 2 engine was triggered about 37 seconds after takeoff, which indicated that the engine had flamed out. During that time, the airplane was flying at an altitude of 457m, he said.
Wang also said that the propellers of the No. 2 engine went into the feathered mode after the flame-out signal. The auto-feather system is activated when the power of the engine becomes insufficient to produce the thrust, he said, adding that the system helps reduce drag during an engine failure.
Photo: EPA
“Even though the flame-out alarm went off, the engine did not actually flame out and was still running,” Wang said, adding that the aircraft’s dashboard should have informed the pilot that it was the No. 2 engine that had malfunctioned.
Despite the problem with the No. 2 engine, Wang said that the flight crew did not shut it down, but decided to increase its throttle.
Wang said that although there was no sign of abnormality with the No. 1 engine, the flight crew manually turned it off when the airplane climbed to 488m, leading that engine to go into feathered mode as well.
Photo: Liao Chen-hui, Taipei Times
The flight crew later tried to restart the No. 1 engine, but did not have enough time to power the engine back into full operation, Wang said.
The data further showed that the aircraft had sounded a stall warning five times before the FDR stopped recording.
After the third stall warning, the flight crew contacted the control tower and called out: “Mayday, Mayday, engine flame-out.”
The council also showed the data plot from the FDR of the engines, which indicated that both engines had operated normally before the No. 2 engine went into feathered mode.
As to what led to the failure of the No. 2 engine and why the flight crew decided to turn off the No. 1 engine following a brief discussion, Wang said that these questions could only be answered after further investigation.
Previously, media reports had speculated that the problem could be with the No. 1 engine, as the company had replaced it twice since it acquired the aircraft from the French manufacturer.
Yann Torres, a representative from the French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation, also attended the press conference and confirmed that the ATR 72-600 airplanes are able to operate with one engine, even during take-off.
Meanwhile, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) said that all pilots operating ATR 72 models are to be retrained.
Clark Lin (林俊良), director of the administration’s flight standards division, said that the airline has 71 pilots trained to fly ATR 72 planes, adding that they would be required to take an oral test on operating the aircraft.
The test would be administered over four days, beginning today, he said.
Lin said that pilots could still fly the airplanes before they take the test, because they are qualified pilots.
However, they must finish the test within four days and would be asked to be requalified as pilots if they fail the test, Lin said.
The pilots would later be asked to operate a flight simulator as well.
CAA statistics showed that of five TransAsia Airways incidents between 2010 and last year that involved problems with an engine, two of them were attributed to human error.
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
‘DETERRENT’: US national security adviser-designate Mike Waltz said that he wants to speed up deliveries of weapons purchased by Taiwan to deter threats from China US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, affirmed his commitment to peace in the Taiwan Strait during his confirmation hearing in Washington on Tuesday. Hegseth called China “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security” and said that he would aim to limit Beijing’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region, Voice of America reported. He would also adhere to long-standing policies to prevent miscalculations, Hegseth added. The US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was the first for a nominee of Trump’s incoming Cabinet, and questions mostly focused on whether he was fit for the
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
RSS