TransAsia plane crash: Pilot complained of ‘engine abnormality’ before take-off

By The Telegraph

The captain of doomed TransAsia Flight GE235 complained of “engine abnormalities” and requested an urgent inspection of the plane shortly before its final take-off but was rebuffed, it has been claimed.

Liao Jiangzhong, the plane’s former air force pilot, is among 32 people so far confirmed to have died when the aircraft crashed into a river shortly after taking off from Taipei’s Songshan airport on Wednesday morning.

An unnamed “whistleblower” told Taiwan’s Liberty Times newspaper that Mr Liao requested a thorough inspection of the plane after noticing “engine abnormalities” during its previous flight. The pilot registered the problem on a flight log, the newspaper added.

However, the source claimed that TransAsia staff had only inspected the plane’s communications equipment rather than performing a full inspection, for fear of incurring penalties for relying the flight from Taipei to the island of Kinmen.

Wu Huh-sheng, a company manager, rejected the allegation, telling the newspaper TransAsia had received no reports of “faulty engines”.

The ATR-72-600 prop-jet aircraft crashed shortly after take off from Taipei's downtown Sungshan Airport en route to the outlying Taiwan-controlled Kinmen islands. There were 53 passengers on the plane, including two children and 31 mainland Chinese individuals, and five crew.

So far no cause has been given for the crash, which was captured in dramatic footage from a dashboard camera. Civil aviation officials said the flight took off at 10.53am and lost contact with controllers two minutes later.However,  in their final message to air traffic controllers the pilots suggested the plane had suffered catastrophic engine failure.

“Mayday! Mayday! Engine Flame-out!” one pilot says.

The claims emerged as the death toll from the disaster rose to 32. Eleven people are still missing while 15 survived, including a one-year-old boy who was pulled from the water by his father and saved using CPR.

Taiwanese aviation officials say the plane, an ATR 72-600 turboprop, had been in service since April last year and had undergone a “routine safety check” last month.