A factual report released late last week by Taiwan’s Aviation Safety Council concludes that the pilot flying the TransAsia ATR 72-600 that crashed into Taiwan’s Keelung River shortly after taking off from Taipei Songshan Airport on February 4 mistakenly shut down the working left engine 46 seconds after the right engine auto-feathered the number-two propeller. The aircraft, with another experienced captain sitting in the right seat, had departed Songshan Airport at 10:51 a.m. local time. The crash killed 43 of the 58 people on board the aircraft and injured two others on the ground.
The report said that through 1,200 feet AGL on takeoff, the crew received an “Eng-2 Flameout at Takeoff,” warning message. Five seconds after the initial warning, the captain flying announced he was pulling throttle number one back to idle, despite a warning to cross check first from the other captain in the right seat. Fifteen seconds later the right seat pilot asked for confirmation the right engine had failed, but the pilot flying did not increase power on the number-one engine as the airspeed slowed to 101 knots. Four seconds later, the FDR recorded the first stall warning and stick shaker activity. For the next 20 seconds, the two pilots sounded confused about which engine had failed as the number-two power lever was first advanced and then quickly pulled back to idle. The flight recorder then confirmed that the number-one condition lever was pulled back into cutoff. Approximately 40 seconds later, the pilot flying realized the error and called for a restart of the number-one engine. The left engine’s N1 speed however, had reached only 30 percent by the time of impact.