By
James Rush
A plane crashed and caught fire while making a second landing attempt
in stormy weather at an airport on a small Taiwanese island, with 47
people trapped and feared dead.
Taiwanese Transport Minister Yeh
Kuang-shih said 11 others were injured when the plane crashed while
landing, the government's Central News Agency has said.
Yeh was quoted as saying the flight, operated by Taiwan's TransAsia Airways, carried 58 passengers and crew members.
WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT
flight GE222 which crashed while attempting to land in stormy weather on
the Taiwanese island of Penghu
injured when the plane crashed while landing, the government's Central
News Agency has said
The news agency had earlier quoted a local fire brigade chief as saying that 51 people had been killed.
Flight
GE222, a twin-engine turboprop ATR-72 aircraft, was heading from the
southern port city of Kaohsiung to the island of Penghu in the Taiwan
Strait, according to the Taiwanese news agency.
It crashed outside
the airport in Xixi village, with pictures in local media showing
firefighters using flashlights to look at wreckage in the darkness.
'It's
chaotic on the scene,' Jean Shen, director of the civil aviation
authorities, told Reuters. 'The fire department was putting out the
flames. They will give us the number of casualties very soon.'
Penghu is a lightly populated island that averages about two flights a day from Taipei.
The
flight left Kaohsiung at 4.53 p.m. for Magong on Penghu, according to
the head of Taiwan's Civil Aeronautics Administration, Jean Shen.
heading from the southern port city of Kaohsiung to the island of Penghu
in the Taiwan Strait, according to the Taiwanese news agency
pictures in local media showing firefighters using flashlights to look
at wreckage in the darkness
At 7.06 p.m., after saying it would make a second attempt at a landing, the plane lost contact with the tower.
Visibility
as the plane approached was 1,600 meters (one mile), which met
standards for landing, and two flights had landed before GE222, one at
5.34 p.m. and the other at 6.57 p.m., the agency reported.
But it
appeared that heavy rain reduced visibility and the plane was forced to
pull up and make a second landing attempt, the report cited the county
fire department as saying.
and strong winds, shutting financial markets and schools. Pictured is
Typhoon Matmo in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan
Typhoon Matmo slammed into Taiwan on Wednesday with heavy rains and strong winds, shutting financial markets and schools.
Shen said the plane was 14 years old.
In
October 2013, a Lao Airlines ATR-72 crashed during a heavy storm as it
approached Pakse Airport in southern Laos, killing all 49 people on
board.
TransAsia Airways is a Taiwan-based airline with a fleet of
23 mostly Airbus aircraft, flying chiefly on domestic routes, but with
some flights to Japan, Thailand and Cambodia among its Asian
destinations.
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