Forty-seven people are reported to have died after a Taiwanese aircraft crashed while trying to make an emergency landing on the island of Penghu in the Taiwan Strait.
Initial reports suggested TransAsia Airways flight GE222 from Kaohsiung crashed just short of the runway of Magong airport on the small Taiwanese island at about 7pm local time.
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The 70-seat aircraft was reported to have been trying to land for a second time in stormy weather when it crashed.
The ATR-72 twin turboprop was scheduled to depart Koahsiung at 4pm but appears to have been delayed by an hour. The flight to Penghu should have taken 35 minutes and it remains unclear why the aircraft crashed almost an hour-and-a-half after it should have landed.
Taiwan had been battered during the day by Typhoon Matmo, a category two stormon Tropical Storm Risk’s scale of one to five, which led to disruption to flights and reports of at least one death.
Flight GE222 was carrying 54 passengers and four crew. The government said 11 injured people were taken to hospital.
The aircraft crashed outside the airport in Xixi village, and pictures in local media showed a handful of firefighters using torches to search the wreckage after dark.
Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan’s president, called it “a very sad day in the history of Taiwanese aviation” and ordered authorities to clarify the details quickly, said a spokesman for his office.
About 200 military personnel were sent to help with the recovery effort, the defence ministry said.
The ministry said military vehicles and ambulances were rushing people to hospital and an air force rescue team was on standby to transfer survivors to Taiwan’s main island for treatment, the agency reported.
Visibility as the plane approached was reported to be 1,600 metres, which met standards for landing, and two flights had landed before GE222.
The local fire department said it appeared heavy rain reduced visibility and the pilot was forced to pull up and make the second landing attempt.
TransAsia Airways said it was arranging to take relatives of the passengers to Magong on Thursday morning.
ATR, the Franco-Italian aircraft maker, expressed its “deepest sympathies” to the families and friends of those affected. It said it would act in an advisory role to the air crash investigation.
The aircraft involved was delivered to TransAsia Airways in June 2000, ATR said.
The Tapei-based airline said the captain of the aircraft had been flying for 25 years and had almost 30,000 flight hours, while the co-pilot had been flying for two and a half years. It said two of the passengers on board were French nationals.
TransAsia, Taiwan’s first private civilian airline founded in 1951, operates eight ATR-72 aircraft mostly for domestic and short-haul international flights. A previous accident involving fatalities was in December 2002 when an aircraft of the same type crashed into the sea, killing the two pilots, according to AviationSafetyNetwork, an accident-information website.
Taiwan’s last aviation disaster was also was near Penghu. A China Airlines Boeing 747 broke apart in mid-air in 2002 and crashed into the Taiwan Strait, killing all 225 people aboard.
The most recent accident involving an ATR-72 was in October last year, when a Lao Airlines aircraft crashed during a storm as it approached Pakse airport in southern Laos, killing all 49 people on board.
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