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[h=4]Plane clips bridge and plunges into river, killing 23 in Taiwan[/h]A TransAsia Airways plane with 58 people aboard crashed into a river Wednesday when its wing clipped a bridge shortly after takeoff, killing at least 15.
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Video from a driver's dash camera captures the moment a turboprop plane with 58 people on board crashes into a Taipei river. Rough cut. (No reporter narration)
Video provided by Reuters Newslook
Image taken from video provided by TVBS shows a commercial airplane clipping an elevated roadway just before it careened into a river in Taipei, Taiwan, on Wednesday.(Photo: TVBS via AP)
BEIJING — Around twenty people were missing Wednesday after a TransAsia Airways flight clipped its wing on a bridge shortly after takeoff from the Taiwanese capital Taipei and then crashed into a nearby river, killing at least 23.
More than half of the 58 passengers aboard TransAsia Airways Flight GE235 en route to the outlying Taiwan-controlled Kinmen islands were from China and the death toll was expected to rise. The plane is an ATR72-600 prop-jet aircraft.
Rescuers rushed to the scene of the crash, where a large portion of the wrecked fuselage jutted out of the shallow Keelung River with one wing missing. Hours later, emergency personnel in rubber dinghies crowded around what remained of the plane. Cranes were brought to the river to lift up the wreckage. As night fell in Taiwan, 20 people were still missing.
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A plane from Taiwan with 58 people aboard clipped a bridge shortly after takeoff and careened into a river Wednesday. Early reports say at least 8 people are known dead and at least two dozen were rescued. (Feb. 4) AP
Wu Jun-Hong, a Taipei Fire Department official who was coordinating the rescue, said the unaccounted for are either still in the wreckage or were pulled downriver. "At the moment, things don't look too optimistic," Wu told reporters at the scene. "Those in the front of the plane are likely to have lost their lives."
Dashcam footage from vehicles on an elevated highway beside the river showed the plane banked sharply to its left after taking off, just missing apartment blocks, then its left wing clipping the side of the highway. A taxi on the bridge was hit as the plane went down, injuring the driver, Taiwan's TVBS news reported.
Search and rescue team members work on a TransAsia Airways passenger plane that crashed into the Keelung River in Taipei, Taiwan, on Feb. 4.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: David Chang, EPA)
Wednesday's flight had taken off from Taipei's downtown Sungshan Airport. Taiwan's Civil Aeronautics Administration described the ATR72-600 model as its best plane and said the pilot had 4,900 hours of flying experience.
At the crash scene, local TV footage showed a small child, one of two children on board, sitting upright in a rescue dinghy beside the crashed plane. Two adults, with blood on their faces from head wounds, managed to walk up the bank.
The plane's "black boxes" were recovered and TV footage showed them in apparently decent condition. Based on a recording of communications between the cockpit and the control tower, the pilot called out "mayday" three times shortly after takeoff, the CCA said. The recording did not provide any other clues about the cause of the crash.
The agency is assessing whether to ground other ATR72-600 aircraft in Taiwan, said its Director-General Lin Zhiming.
The fate of pilot Liao Jianzong was not immediately known. Taiwan's Now News website reported that he had worked hard to achieve his position. Born into a poor family, his parents sold clothes at a street stall. After serving in the army, Liao studied English diligently to land a commercial airline job.
Relatives and friends on Kinmen, an island close to China, gathered at the airport to await news.
Thirty-one passengers were tourists from Xiamen, a nearby Chinese coastal city, who were traveling as two tour groups organized by two Xiamen travel agencies. One of the mainland tour groups was originally booked on a later flight to Kinmen, but changed to the ill-fated flight Wednesday morning, reported CNA, Taiwan's state news agency.
After decades of rivalry and tense relations across the Taiwan Straits, Taipei has relaxed restrictions on mainland tourists in recent years, leading to a boom in visitors from China.
It was the second of TransAsia's French-made ATR 72 to crash in the past year. Last July, a flight crashed while attempting to land on the island of Penghu off Taiwan's coast, killing 48 people and injuring another 10. Stormy weather and low visibility were suspected as factors in that crash.
Eversley reported from New York; contributing: Associated Press
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