Video from a driver's dash camera captures the moment a turboprop plane with 58 people on board crashes into a Taipei river. Rough cut. (No reporter narration) Video provided by Reuters Newslook
TransAsia Airways is dealing with its second deadly accident in less than a year after one of its planes hit a bridge and dramatically plunged into a river shortly after takeoff Wednesday.
At least 26 people died and 15 survived TransAsia Airways Flight 235's crash in the Taiwanese capital of Taipei on Wednesday. Seventeen people remained missing and were feared dead.
The accident comes seven months after another TransAsia Airways flight crashed while landing in stormy weather and low visibility on an island off Taiwan's coast in July, leaving 48 people dead.
Before that crash, the airlines hadn't seen a deadly accident since 2002, when two pilots were killed as a TransAsia ATR Cargo plane crashed into the sea. In 1995, four people died when another one of its cargo planes crashed into a hillside. A handful of other minor incidents in the past two decades did not result in deaths.
Today, TransAsia Airways is Taiwan's third-largest airline carrier by fleet size, with 23 planes serving 33 routes centered around south and northeast Asia. The carrier was founded in 1951, when it was Taiwan's first private commercial airline.
The firm's fleet is made up of ATR 72-500 and 72-600 turboprop planes — the latter is the model of plane that crashed Wednesday just a few minutes after takeoff en route to Kinmen, a small island close to mainland China but controlled by Taiwan. Airbus A320, A321 and A330 jets are also in service by TransAsia Airways.
The company listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange in 2011 and in late 2014 it started a low-budget carrier called V Air in a bid to keep pace with other budget airlines in the region such as AirAsia. It employs just over 2,000 people and has a market capitalization of about 7.64 billion Taiwan new dollars ($243 million).
Vincent Lin, the firm's chairman, took over in 2010 and since then TransAsia Airways has aggressively targeted more destinations on mainland China. One of the airline's marketing slogans used on its website translates as "trips with elegant smiles."
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