{"id":88480,"date":"2015-02-04T15:34:16","date_gmt":"2015-02-04T15:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=88480"},"modified":"2015-02-04T15:34:16","modified_gmt":"2015-02-04T15:34:16","slug":"taiwan-plane-deadly-river-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=88480","title":{"rendered":"Taiwan plane in deadly river crash"},"content":{"rendered":"

A plane carrying mostly Chinese tourists has crashed into a river in Taiwan, killing at least 23 people.<\/p>\n

Dramatic video footage emerged showing the TransAsia Airways plane clipping a bridge as it came down shortly after take-off from a Taipei airport.<\/p>\n

The plane, carrying 58 people, has broken up and the fuselage is lying half-submerged in the Keelung River. Rescue efforts are ongoing.<\/p>\n

At least 15 people have been pulled out alive, with 20 still missing.<\/p>\n

Television footage showed some passengers wading clear of the sunken wreckage and a toddler being pulled out alive by rescuers.<\/p>\n

\n
The dramatic moment a toddler was rescued from the sunken wreckage of the jet<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Emergency teams have cut the plane open to gain access, attempting to reach the remaining passengers trapped in the front section of the fuselage.<\/p>\n

“At the moment, things don’t look too optimistic,” Wu Jun-hong, a Taipei fire department official coordinating the rescue effort, told reporters.<\/p>\n

Mr Wu said the fire department had requested heavy cranes to pull the body of the plane out of the water.<\/p>\n

\n
The BBC’s Cindy Sui: says there are still people trapped on the plane<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

TransAsia said in a statement that one passenger had already been discharged from hospital.<\/p>\n

The ATR-72 turbo-prop plane had just taken off from Taipei Songshan Airport and was heading to the Kinmen islands, just off the coast of the south-eastern Chinese city of Xiamen.<\/p>\n

It is the second TransAsia ATR-72 to crash in seven months, following an accident last July which killed 48 people and injured 15.<\/p>\n

The final communication from the pilots to air traffic control was “Mayday, mayday, engine flame out”, according to a recording played on local media. The recording was not immediately verified by aviation officials.<\/p>\n

Flight controllers lost contact with the plane at 10:55 local time (02:55 GMT).<\/p>\n

Footage of the plane filmed from inside passing cars showed it banking sharply, hitting a taxi and clipping the bridge before crashing into the river.<\/p>\n

“I saw a taxi, probably just metres ahead of me, being hit by one wing of the plane,” an eyewitness told local media.<\/p>\n

“The plane was huge and really close to me. I’m still trembling.”<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/div>\n
These images were captured as the plane careered over an elevated road<\/div>\n

TV footage showed rescuers standing on the tail section of the broken wreckage trying to pull passengers out of the plane with ropes.<\/p>\n

The majority of the plane, including the front section of the fuselage and the wings, appeared to be underwater.<\/p>\n

The plane’s flight data recorders, also known as black boxes, have been recovered.<\/p>\n

Jaime Molloy, an English teacher who has lived in Taipei for three-and-a-half years, works near the scene of the crash.<\/p>\n

Mr Molloy, who is originally from Berkshire, told the BBC: “The most disturbing scenes I saw were the debris, which included carry-on luggage and personal affects, as well as parts of the plane.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/div>\n
The military is helping in the rescue effort<\/div>\n
\"An<\/div>\n
An injured passenger is escorted up the river bank by one of the rescue workers<\/div>\n

TransAsia said it had contacted relatives of all the 22 Taiwanese passengers and was attempting to reach relatives of the Chinese nationals on board.<\/p>\n

The BBC’s Cindy Sui in Taipei says the Chinese tourists could have been on their way home as many people come to Taiwan through Kinmen island.<\/p>\n

TransAsia chief Chen Xinde offered a “deep apology” in a televised news conference, but said his planes had been “under thorough scrutiny” since mid-2014.<\/p>\n

“Both our planes and our flight safety system are following strict regulations, so we also want to know what caused the new plane model to crash, but I don’t want to speculate,” he said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A plane carrying mostly Chinese tourists has crashed into a river in Taiwan, killing at least 23 people. Dramatic video footage emerged showing the TransAsia Airways plane clipping a bridge as it came down shortly after take-off from a Taipei airport. The plane, carrying 58 people, has broken up and the fuselage is lying half-submerged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[38,14],"class_list":["post-88480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-palaver-newspaper","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=88480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=88480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=88480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=88480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}