Taiwan's civil aviation regulator said that 10 of the 49 TransAsia Airways pilots it tested in handling of an engine failure have failed and will be subsequently be suspended. The news comes exactly a week after the airline lost one of its planes to a fatal crash linked to engine trouble.
It has been confirmed that 42 people died after the plane crashed in Keelung River in Taipei on 4 February, the dramatic footage of which was captured on camera. While 15 people were rescued, one passenger is still missing.
Taiwan's Civil Aviation Authority had tested the ATR pilots from TransAsia Airways in how they would handle an engine failure, and ten of the pilots failed in the oral proficiency tests, Reuters reported.
Taiwan's Aviation Safety Council (ASC) had said last Friday that the plane's blackbox had shown that one of the plane's engines had lost power just after taking off, and the pilots switched off the second one in a bid to restart it.
This move by the pilots has come under scrutiny, given that the aircraft could have been flown even on one engine.
With both engines losing power, the plane lost thrust and stalled within minutes of take-off, and the pilots veered it past residential buildings into a river.
The cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder revealed moments of chaos and confusion, as the pilot sent out a "Mayday" call.
