The death toll from a TransAsia Airways plane crash rose to 38 on Saturday, authorities said, as details emerged that both engines lost power.
Flight GE235 crashed into a river in Taiwan’s capital, Taipei, shortly after takeoff Wednesday with 58 people on board.
Five others remain unaccounted for, while 15 people survived, authorities said.
As crews search for the missing, more revelations emerged on what led to the tragedy.
Pilots grappled with engine problems before the plane clipped a bridge and plunged into a river, Taiwan’s aviation agency said.
During the crisis in the cockpit, the pilots received a series of alerts, starting with an alarm related to one of the engines and followed by five stall warnings as the plane lost thrust.
Stall warning
The two engines on the ATR 72 turboprop aircraft stopped producing power one after the other, leaving the plane flying without thrust for more than a minute, according to the agency.
The stall warning went off in the cockpit five times, Taiwan’s aviation agency said, citing information from the aircraft’s flight recorders.
The alarms sounded for the first engine that ceased power output, but the crew was then heard discussing switching off the other engine before it also stopped generating power.
The pilots issued a mayday alert to air traffic control, announcing an engine flameout. They eventually managed to restart it, but it was too late to prevent a crash.
The Aviation Safety Council said Friday it was still collecting information on the disaster, with a full analysis of Flight GE235’s flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder still months away, and wasn’t yet able to say why the engines shut down.
Investigators will look into the crew’s role, including the possibility they shut off the left engine in response to a warning about the right engine, said Thomas Wang, the council’s managing director. He said the left engine could have stopped working for multiple reasons.
“Either someone reduced it or something else happened, a mechanical failure,” Wang said. “We don’t know.”
Survivors describe horror
The reported engine problems dovetail with the account of Huang Chin-shun, a 72-year-old survivor of the crash.
“I thought something’s wrong with the engine because I always take this flight,” Huang told CNN affiliate ETTV from his hospital bed Thursday.
Stephen Fredrick, a pilot who once flew ATRs for American Airlines, told CNN this week that it looked like Flight GE235 was gliding when dashboard cameras on the ground captured the moments before it crashed into the river.
Fredrick pointed to the position of the nose — slightly down — and the wings, which were level. He said he also thought the plane may have lost power in one or both of the engines.
TransAsia was involved in another deadly disaster in July. Forty-eight people died after an ATR 72 aircraft operated by the airline crashed as it was attempting to land in the Taiwanese Penghu Islands during bad weather.