An ATR 72.
Posted on 07/23/2014 6:35:41 AM PDT by csvset
Taipei, July 23 (CNA) As many as 45 people are feared dead and nine people are injured after a passenger plane operated by TransAsia Airways crashed on the outlying island county of Penghu Wednesday.
The local fire department said that the 45 had no life signs after the twin-engine turboprop ATR 72 crashed just outside Magong airport around 7 p.m. The flight, coded GE 222, took off at 5 p.m. in Kaohsiung and was scheduled to land at Magong 35 minutes later.
The reason the crash happened over an hour later was not immediately clear. (By Elizabeth Hsu)
An ATR 72.
What was the weather conditions at the time of the crash? Bad weather causes many crashes, especially on final approach.
Typhoon Matmo passed over Taiwan Tuesday evening.
2 METERS? I cannot imagine the pilot’s terror.
“Visibility 2 meters” (1:10 in video):
http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/23/world/asia/taiwan-plane-crash/index.html
Is that even to the nose of the plane?
Brrrrrrrrrrr... I can’t even imagine.
The pilot’s feeling of terror would be little different between 2 meters of visibility and a quarter mile visibility...
What might get adrenaline flowing like crazy would be wind shears and turbulence, and loss of lift as headwinds turn to tailwinds.
A few years ago, late winter, we were driving west on I-40 thru the Texas panhandle and hit a wall of the thickest fog we’d ever seen. You couldn’t see the side of the road, let alone any offramps...just the vague glimmer of tail lights ahead; traffic didn’t slow, so we white-knuckled it for close to a hundred miles - virtually blind and going 70MPH, praying that somebody coming up from behind didn’t run through our tailpipe.
“The pilot’s feeling of terror would be little different between 2 meters of visibility and a quarter mile visibility...”
BIG DIFFERENCE!
Yes, he would be focused on his instruments, anyway, but he should have diverted or, if not possible, should have scrubbed the flight before take-off.
The reason the crash happened over an hour later was not immediately clear. (By Elizabeth Hsu)
Huh? They took off at 5 PM, and crashed an hour later around 7 PM? Or do they mean around an hour after their scheduled arrival of 5:35 PM? How could a 35 minute flight take about two hours? Did they stop for donuts? Pass through a wormhole?
Had to make a stop in Bangor.
I cannot think of anything that would be scarier than that, knowing you can’t just pull over, or stop for fear of cars hitting you.
An extremely dangerous aircraft BTW.
I about shat myself....most terrifying two and a half hours ever - from just inside the OK/TX line all the way to just outside Amarillo. My sore knuckles didn’t recover for two days.
That’s a recipe for a major disaster; glad you made it thru. I had a similar experience back in the 80s on I-78 west from NJ to PA, in a blizzard. I had a death grip on the Jeep’s wheel even after I got out of it.
Reminded me this pileup, that occurred Thanksgiving 2012 outside of Beaumont. As I recall, the fog just came out of the air, literally.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/35-injured-50-car-pileup-texas-article-1.1206412
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