* Dramatic footage shows stricken plane’s wing clipping taxi, motorway

* “Mayday Mayday engine flameout”: air traffic control recording

* Passengers swim, wade away from submerged wreckage

* Thirty-one mainland Chinese among 58 on board (Adds France role in investigation, UN safety conference)

(Reuters) – A TransAsia Airways plane with 58 passengers and crew on board careered into a river shortly after taking off from a downtown Taipei airport on Wednesday, killing 23 people and leaving 20 missing, officials said.

Fifteen people survived the crash after the plane lurched between buildings, clipped a taxi and an overpass with its port-side wing and crashed upside down in the shallow water.

Dramatic pictures taken by a motorist and posted on Twitter showed the plane careening over the motorway soon after the turboprop ATR 72-600 aircraft took off in apparently clear weather on a domestic flight for the island of Kinmen.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” a volunteer rescuer surnamed Chen said of the most recent in a series of disasters to hit Asian carriers in the past 12 months.

Television footage showed survivors wearing life jackets wading and swimming clear of wreckage. Others, including a young child, were taken to shore in inflatable boats.

Emergency rescue officials crowded around the partially submerged fuselage of flight GE235, lying on its side in the river, trying to help those on board.

The plane missed apartment buildings by metres, though it was not clear if that was luck or whether the pilot was aiming for the river. Footage showed a van skidding to a halt on the damaged overpass after barely missing the plane’s wing, with small pieces of the aircraft scattered along the road.

The chief executive of TransAsia, Peter Chen, bowed deeply at a televised news conference as he apologised to passengers and crew. TransAsia’s shares closed down 6.9 percent in heavy trade, its biggest percentage decline since late 2011.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said his government had offered Taiwan any help necessary following the crash.

“MAYDAY MAYDAY”

The last communication from one of the aircraft’s pilots was “Mayday Mayday engine flameout”, according to an air traffic control recording on liveatc.net.

A flameout occurs when the fuel supply to the engine is interrupted or when there is faulty combustion, resulting in an engine failure. Twin-engined aircraft, however, are usually able to keep flying even when one engine has failed.

The plane was powered by two Pratt & Whitney PW127M engines. Pratt & Whitney is part of United Technologies.

The head of Taiwan’s civil aviation authority, Lin Tyh-ming, said the aircraft last underwent maintenance on Jan. 26. The pilot had 4,916 flying hours under his belt and the co-pilot had 6,922 hours, he said.

Taipei’s downtown Songshan airport, the smaller of the city’s two airports, provides mostly domestic flights but also connections to Japan, China and South Korea.

A statement from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said 31 of those on board were tourists from the southeastern city of Xiamen, which lies close to Taiwan’s Kinmen island.

The crash is the latest in a string of mishaps to hit Asian carriers in the past 12 months. An AirAsia jet bound for Singapore crashed soon after taking off from the Indonesian city of Surabaya on Dec. 28, killing all 162 people on board.

The disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines jet last March, and the downing of a sister plane over Ukraine four months later with a combined loss of 537 lives, have dominated a United Nations safety conference this week.

SOURCE REUTERS, Read more..

ATR statement on TransAsia’s flight GE235

ATR regrets to confirm that an ATR 72-600 operated by Taiwan’s TransAsia Airways was involved in an accident today at around 10.45 am (local time) near Taipei Songshan airport (Taiwan). The flight GE235 was operating between Taipei and Kinmen with 58 people on board.

The aircraft, registered under B-22816, was MSN (Manufacturing Serial Number) 1141.

At this time, the circumstances of the accident are still under investigation.

The Aviation Safety Council of Taiwan will lead the investigation and will be the official source of information. According to ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) regulations, ATR will advise the French Bureau d’Enquêtes et Analyses (BEA), safety investigation authority representing the State of the aircraft manufacturer.

ATR express its deepest sympathy to the families, friends and to those affected by the accident.

(ATR press release)