Taiwan plane crash: engine was shut off accidentally

Taipei

The pilot of a passenger plane that crashed in Taiwan killing 43 people shut down the aircraft's only working engine, exclaiming: "Wow, pulled back wrong throttle," seconds before the disaster, investigators said today. 

TransAsia Airways Flight GE235 clipped a bridge and plunged into a river shortly after take-off from Taipei's Songshan airport in February with 53 passengers and five crew on board. Only 15 people survived. 

Disturbing cockpit transcripts released by Taiwan's Aviation Safety Council revealed the pilots trying to deal with an engine that had lost power, but then reducing the thrust of the other, functioning engine.

Thursday's report said the plane climbed to 1,200 feet (365 metres) before a warning alarm sounded, which indicated that the plane's second engine had undergone "flameout at take off".

Despite the warning signal coming from Engine Two, the pilot at the controls said: "I will pull back Engine One throttle."

Chaos then ensued with both engines failing as the pilots tried to restart them in the few seconds before the crash.

The last words from the black box recordings were the monitoring pilot shouting: "Impact, impact, brace for impact."

Dramatic car dashcam images at the time showed the plane hitting an elevated road as it banked steeply away from buildings before crashing into the Keelung River.