Both engines stopped producing thrust just before the ATR72-600 crashed into the city's Keelung River on Wednesday four minutes after takeoff, the data indicate.
The data raise the possibility that the pilot may have mistakenly cut fuel to the only engine keeping the plane in flight.
In releasing the information on Friday, Taiwan aviation safety authorities declined to provide any interpretation or speculate on the cause of the crash.
More bodies were recovered on Friday from the Keelung River, the Taipei-based airline said, bringing the total number of fatalities to 35 with 15 injured and eight people—all Chinese nationals—still missing. The plane was carrying 53 passengers and five crew members. Many of the passengers were tourists from China, from the mainland province of Fujian, next to the outlying island of Kinmen.
Data retrieved from the voice and data flight recorders on the flight show that the turboprop experienced trouble shortly after takeoff. A warning alarm sounded around 37 seconds into the flight at an altitude of 1,200 feet, according to the data, which the cockpit crew believed indicated that the right engine had had a "flameout"—an aviation term for suddenly stopping.
Thomas Wang, the director of Taiwan's Aviation Safety Council, which is in charge of the crash investigation, told reporters that an examination of the data showed that the right engine "actually did not flame out." Instead, he said, the engine "went into an auto-feather mode which it should not have." An engine starts to auto-feather, a glide mode, when a propeller doesn't produce any thrust.
Mr. Wang said the fuel to the left engine was eventually cut off manually. The plane then descended from 1,600 feet to around 500 to 600 feet, at which point there was an attempt to refuel that engine.
Air-traffic control lost communication with the plane's pilots four minutes after takeoff from Taipei's Songshan Airport en route to Kinmen, at about 10:53 a.m. local time on Wednesday, the Civil Aeronautics Administration said.
The Aviation Safety Council on Friday said Flight 235 issued five speed-loss warnings before crashing.
The ASC presented its preliminary findings after analyzing the data retrieved from the plane's two cockpit voice recorders and flight data recorder, commonly known as the 'black boxes.' A final report on the cause of the crash will be released in 12 months, said Mr. Wang.
Wednesday's crash was TransAsia's second fatal air accident in seven months. Earlier on Friday, the CAA said the carrier would be banned from adding new international routes for a year. TransAsia had already been excluded from new international routes after the crash in July that killed 49 people.
The second plane crash extends the ban to Feb. 4, 2016, the CAA said.
The airline said Friday that aviation-safety experts will conduct a year-long review of its fleet and overhaul the organization, particularly departments overseeing flight safety and mechanics. In addition, it said, all pilots flying ATRs will be required to take qualifying tests monitored by the Civil Aeronautics Administration and a third party.
The plane was made by France's Avions de Transport Regional, known as ATR, a joint venture between Airbus Group NV and Italy's Finmeccanica SpA. The ATR72-600 turboprop last underwent routine maintenance Jan. 26.
Air-safety concerns in Asia have been growing as the region's traffic continues to boom and in response to a number of tragedies last year, including the Dec. 28 crash of AirAsia Flight 8501, which went down in the Java Sea after taking off from Surabaya, Indonesia, on its way to Singapore.
The exact cause of that accident remains unclear. The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in March also remains a mystery, with recovery crews searching two vast areas in the Indian Ocean.
Mr. Wang said at this stage of the investigation, the council isn't determining what caused the right engine to go into auto-feather mode—a process that essentially turns off thrust to power the plane. He also declined to say why fuel was shut off to the left engine.
"What we know now is both engines did not produce power before it went into the river," said Mr. Wang.
TransAsia said Wednesday that when the plane was delivered last April in Macau, one of the engines was found to be functioning improperly. The official said the maker of the engines, Pratt & Whitney Canada, was notified and a replacement engine was immediately provided. According to the airline, the plane had a total of around 1,000 flight hours since it was delivered, the same as the right engine, while the left replacement engine had logged roughly 800 hours.
A spokeswoman for Pratt & Whitney said the company is cooperating with authorities and with its customers but declined to say more while the investigation is under way.
ATR representatives at the news conference said the plane is designed to have the capability to operate, including take off, with one engine. Mr. Wang said, before takeoff, both engines didn't show any problems.
When asked about the possibility of a bird strike, Mr. Wang said it isn't known at this stage of the investigation as pieces of the plane's debris are still being salvaged from the river.
Earlier this week, the Civil Aeronautics Administrations said the weather conditions at the time of the crash met the standard for flying.
Images of the plummeting aircraft, which clipped an overpass before hitting the water, were captured on dashboard cameras and spread quickly on social media.
Taiwan, which has a mature regulatory system and has been actively engaged in international safety efforts for decades, generally isn't considered among the Asian countries that outside safety groups worry about the most.
The latest analysis conducted by the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency that sets nonbinding safety standards for carriers and regulators, indicates that Asia has at least three of the 10 countries around the globe deemed to have the most serious safety shortcomings.
Founded in 1951, TransAsia, a smaller carrier compared with larger rivals China Airlines and EVA Airways , has sought to aggressively expand its network beyond domestic Taiwan routes. The latest crash is likely to prove a challenge for the airline, but isn't expected to have a major impact Taiwan's tourism industry ahead of the crucial Lunar New Year, a travel season on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
Source: The Wall Street Journal by Aries Poon and Colum Murphy
from China Travel & Tourism News http://ift.tt/1iB6EFm
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