TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) – A pilot described by colleagues as nervous and hasty mistakenly throttled down a still-running engine following a glitch with the other engine in an airline crash that killed 43 people in Taiwan in February, flight safety officials said Thursday.
A preliminary investigation after the Feb. 4 crash of TransAsia flight GE235 already had indicated that the pilot shut off the remaining engine after one of them went idle. But the account Thursday by Taiwan’s Aviation Safety Council – while not assigning blame – added additional details about the crash and the background of the pilot, including that he had failed a flight simulator test as recently as May 2014.
Both the pilot and co-pilot died.
Minutes after takeoff in Taipei, a ribbon-like sensor connector in the automated flight system failed and put one engine into a mode that effectively cut its power to the aircraft, Taiwan’s Aviation Safety Council Executive Director Thomas Wang told a news conference.
The engine’s condition, useful in other cases to reduce torque, generated a flame-out warning in the cockpit 37 seconds after takeoff, according to a report by the council. However, it says the engine itself was technically still capable of providing power to the ATR-72 aircraft. The aircraft was also designed to fly on one engine.