TransAsia Airways Flight 235
ATR 72-600 · Loss of control and crash following pilot misidentification of failed engine
From Taipei Songshan International Airport (TSA) to Kinmen Airport (KNH)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA15RA059
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Final · ASC final report, 30 Jun 2016
- Event fatalities
- 43 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- 58
- Survivors
- 15
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 17 · 2 on the ground
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Not recorded
ATR 72-600
- Flight
- GE235
- Aircraft type
- ATR 72
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- B-22816
- Operator
- TransAsia Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- 43
- Route
- From Taipei Songshan International Airport (TSA)To Kinmen Airport (KNH)
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 129: Foreign
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Takeoff
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Loss of engine power (partial)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Miscellaneous
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
From the investigation findings the Wikipedia article reports, sorted into the NTSB's cause areas with AI assistance.
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
TransAsia Airways Flight 235 was a domestic flight from Taipei to Kinmen, Taiwan. On 4 February 2015, the aircraft serving the flight, a 10-month-old ATR 72, crashed into the Keelung River around 5 km from Taipei Songshan Airport, from where the aircraft had just departed. On board were 58 people, 15 of whom survived with injuries.
Two minutes after takeoff, the pilots reported an engine failure. After climbing to a height of 1630 ft, the other engine, still operating normally, was mistakenly shut down. The aircraft lost altitude, banked sharply to the left and clipped a taxi traveling west on the Huandong Viaduct (causing injuries to two more persons), then the viaduct itself, before crashing into the river below.
Flight 235 was the second fatal accident involving a TransAsia Airways ATR aircraft within seven months; Flight 222 had crashed on 23 July 2014, also with 58 people on board. On that flight, 48 people had died.
Flight
Flight 235 departed Taipei Songshan Airport at 10:52 Taiwan time (02:52 UTC), for its destination of Kinmen Airport, with 53 passengers and five crew members on board. Shortly after take-off, a fault in the autofeather unit of the number-2 engine caused the automatic take-off power control system to autofeather that engine. The flight crew misdiagnosed the problem, and shut down the still-functioning number-1 engine. The aircraft reached an altitude of 1630 ft and then began descending until it crashed. The last pilot communication to air traffic control was: "Mayday, mayday, engine flameout." At 10:55, the aircraft crashed into the Keelung River, on the border of Nangang District of Taipei and Xizhi District of New Taipei.
The crash was recorded by dashcams in several cars travelling west along the elevated Huandong Viaduct next to the river. The aircraft, flying level, first cleared an apartment building. Then it rolled sharply, at nearly a 90° bank angle, left wing down. As the aircraft flew low over the elevated viaduct, its left wingtip struck the front of a Volkswagen Caddy taxi travelling west on the viaduct, and the outboard section of the wing was torn off when it struck the concrete guardrail at the edge of the viaduct. The aircraft continued its roll and struck the water upside down, breaking into two main pieces. The collision with the taxi and the viaduct was captured in footage from a dashcam in a car travelling a short distance behind the taxi, and debris from the plane's wing and pieces of the viaduct's guardrail were thrown across the road surface. Two people in the taxi suffered minor injuries.
At the time of the accident, no adverse weather phenomena were observed. At 11:00, the cloud base at Songshan was about 1500 ft, the visibility was unrestricted, and a light breeze was blowing from the east at 10 kn. The temperature was 16 C.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
The Taiwanese Aviation Safety Council (ASC) led the investigation into the accident. The French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) represented the country of manufacture, and the Transportation Safety Board of Canada represented the country of engine manufacture. Other parties to the investigation included the Taiwanese Civil Aeronautics Administration, the operator (TransAsia), the aircraft (ATR) and engine (Pratt & Whitney Canada) manufacturers, and Transport Canada. The cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder were recovered on the evening of 4 February, and the data were analysed. According to the executive director of the ASC, Thomas Wang, the aircraft's right engine triggered an alarm just 37 seconds after takeoff. Whereas the crew reported a flameout, according to Wang, data showed the right engine had in fact been moved to idle power. Soon the right engine failed to produce enough thrust for its rotating propeller, lapsing into auto-feathering. A restart was attempted, but the aircraft crashed 72 seconds later.
On 6 February, investigators revealed that the left engine, which does not appear to have had suffered a malfunction, had been manually shut off, while cautioning that the investigation was "too early to say if human error was a factor". Investigators released the following preliminary sequence of events:
Final report
The final report found that, following the uncommanded autofeather of engine number 2 (right engine), the pilot flying the aircraft reduced power and subsequently shut down the operative engine number 1 (left engine). The flight crew failed to perform the failure identification procedure and did not comply with standard operating procedures. As a result, the pilot flying the aircraft became confused regarding the identification and nature of the propulsion-system malfunction. The autofeathering was caused by compromised soldering joints in the autofeather unit. During the initial stages of the take-off roll, the flight crew did not reject the take-off when the automatic take-off power control system ARM pushbutton did not light, and TransAsia did not have a clear requirement to do so. The loss of engine power during the initial climb and inappropriate flight control inputs by the pilot flying generated stall warnings and activation of the stick pusher to which the crew did not respond in a timely and effective manner. The loss of power from both engines was not detected and corrected by the crew in time and the aircraft stalled during the attempted restart at an altitude from which they could not recover. Ineffective flight crew coordination, communication, and threat and error management compromised the safety of the flight. The crew failed to obtain relevant data from each other regarding the status of both engines. The pilot flying did not appropriately respond to input from the pilot monitoring.
During the investigation, TransAsia Airways disclosed confidential information from the draft report to Next magazine, which published a story in its issue of 11 May 2016. This was an attempt to influence the investigation into the accident. TransAsia Airways were fined NT$3,000,000 (US$92,000).
Text from the Wikipedia article “TransAsia Airways Flight 235” (revision 1375513964, retrieved 2026-09-18) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out. Read the article
Sources
Wikipedia article: TransAsia Airways Flight 235
- Article
- TransAsia Airways Flight 235
- Revision
- 1375513964 · 2026-09-18 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q18951344
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DCA15RA059
- Event ID
- 20150210X13614
- Case number
- DCA15RA059
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "TransAsia Airways Flight 235" (page 45298077, revision 1375513964); merged with NTSB case DCA15RA059 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date; matches the Aviation Safety Council (ASC), Taiwan (now Taiwan Transportation Safety Board, TTSB) final report
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site
- Map position
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia article coordinates; matches the Aviation Safety Council (ASC), Taiwan (now Taiwan Transportation Safety Board, TTSB) final report
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports); gaps and aircraft details from NTSB record DCA15RA059
- Operation
- airline flight number in the infobox
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia infobox: total_fatalities; matches the Aviation Safety Council (ASC), Taiwan (now Taiwan Transportation Safety Board, TTSB) final report
- Ground fatalities
- Aviation Safety Council (ASC), Taiwan (now Taiwan Transportation Safety Board, TTSB) final report
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (3)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "TransAsia Airways Flight 235" and NTSB case DCA15RA059, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this event outside the United States Wikipedia's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.
- Checked against the Aviation Safety Council (ASC), Taiwan (now Taiwan Transportation Safety Board, TTSB) final report (2016-06-30) on 2026-09-18. The report states the same date, crash-site coordinates, flight number, fatalities, registration, operator, departure, destination, damage and type of operation. Taken from the report: ground fatalities. Not checked: place and aircraft type.