TransAsia crash: Taiwan plane in deadly river crash

 A plane carrying mostly Chinese tourists has crashed into a river in Taiwan, killing several people.


e plane, carrying fifty eight folks, has shifting and therefore the body is lying half-submerged within the Keelung stream. the amount of dead remains unclear.

Another TransAsia plane crashed in inclementness last Gregorian calendar month, killing forty eight folks.

Cindy Sui reports: ''Many of the folks on board area unit still within the aircraft''
Dramatic video footage emerged showing the TransAsia Airways plane clipping a bridge because it declined shortly when take-off from a national capital airfield.

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Rescuers on boats have cut the plane hospitable gain access to many folks still at bay within.

The ATR-72 turbo-prop plane had simply started out from national capital Songshan airfield and was heading to the Kinmen islands, simply off the coast of the south-eastern Chinese town of Xiamen.

Taiwan's Civil natural philosophy Administration aforementioned the last communication from one amongst the pilots had been: "Mayday, mayday, mayday."

Flight controllers lost contact with the plane at 10:55 local time (02:55 GMT).
Footage of the plane filmed from inside passing cars showed it banking sharply, hitting a taxi and clipping the bridge before crashing into the river.
"I saw a taxi, probably just metres ahead of me, being hit by one wing of the plane," an eyewitness told local media.
"The plane was huge and really close to me. I'm still trembling."
Reports on the number of dead varied, with some saying at least 16 people lost their lives. Several people suffered injuries and some were still unaccounted for.

 TransAsia Airways

• Founded in 1951 as Taiwan's first private civilian-operated domestic airline, later expanded to overseas routes
• Has about 20 planes in its fleet - a mix of Airbus and dual-propeller ATR planes
• Gained popularity due to its low-cost tickets
• Flies many routes between Taiwan and mainland China, and to parts of South East Asia

TV footage showed rescuers standing on large sections of broken wreckage trying to pull passengers out of the plane with ropes.
Those that were rescued were helped into dinghies and taken to shore.

Some were then placed on stretchers and brought to hospital.

But officers aforementioned some passengers were still treed within the portion, that perceived to be the wrong way up.

"We're asking the general public works department for significant cranes to be deployed within the hope that the body of the plane will be upraised up," aforementioned Chinese Jun-Hong, assistant director of Taipei's local department.

"At the instant, we expect lots of the treed folks area unit within the head of the plane."

The plane was carrying five crew and 53 passengers, including 31 tourists from the south-eastern Chinese city of Xiamen.
The BBC's Cindy Sui in Taipei says the Chinese tourists could have been on their way home as many people come to Taiwan through Kinmen island.
TransAsia chief Chen Xinde offered a "deep apology" in a televised news conference, but said his planes had been "under thorough scrutiny" since mid-2014.
"Both our planes and our flight safety system are following strict regulations, so we also want to know what caused the new plane model to crash, but I don't want to speculate," he said.