Pilot’s one mistake saw plane crash into village as bodies ‘thrown into street’

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It was the plane crash which shocked the world and resulted in 48 people being killed.

And the horrifiying truth is that it could so easily have been prevented and all those lives would have been saved.

Eight years ago today on July 23, 2014, a TransAsia Airways plane ploughed into a forest and village, killing most of its passengers and all of its crew.

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An investigation ruled that the cause of the crash was an "overconfident" pilot who missed the runway in poor weather.

Incredibly, ten of the plane's passengers survived the inferno and managed to crawl to safety – but five villagers were injured in the incident.

The shocking events happened when TransAsia Airways flight 222 took off from Kaohsiung airport in Taiwan en route to Magong on Taiwan's Penghu Island.

It was a scheduled domestic passenger flight with 58 people on board – made up of 54 passengers and four crew members.

But it crashed in a heavy storm near Magong airport killing 48 people on the plane – 44 passengers and all four crew members.

The aircraft sheared trees for several hundred feet in a small forest, before flying out of the woods and into the village of Xixi. At this point the aircraft then impacted, destroying several houses in the village.

The force of the impact ripped the plane apart causing it to explode and burst into flames. Bodies of some of the passengers were thrown onto the streets.

Amazingly, not all of the passengers were killed and ten managed to crawl out of the wreckage and sought refuge in nearby houses.

Residents of Xixi village offered their assistance to the survivors, and some of them treated their injuries, which include cuts and burns. Five further people on the ground were injured.

An investigation was launched by the Taiwan Aviation Safety Council (ASC) and was damning in its verdict of what happened – placing the blame firmly with the pilots.

It said during the heavy rain and thunder of the storm they tried to locate the runway visually but failed. They also ignored safety procedures and decided to land instead of staying in the air and flying on to make a landing elsewhere.

The report said this was a recurring problem at TransAsia. "The non-compliant behaviours were an enduring, systemic problem and formed a poor safety culture," the report said.

The airline was advised to hire more pilots to reduce their workload, and also to invest in flight safety training, but failed to do so.

The pilot, Captain Lee Yi-liang, was found to have good flying skills and had successfully landed planes in the past in bad weather conditions. This was given as one of the reasons for the crash – he was "overconfident" and decided to try and land when others would have not risked it.

The ASC report stated: "The captain was not complying with (and had a complete disregard for) policies, procedures and regulations. This type of hazardous attitude is characterized as 'anti-authority'."

It was not the first fatal crash TransAsia had been involved with. The following year, February 2015, one of its planes clipped a bridge in Taipei and came down in a river, leaving 43 people dead.

Previously, the carrier had also been involved in deadly incidents in 1995 and 2002.

Unsurprisingly, TransAsia did not survive this latest incident and in June 2018, the company entered bankruptcy and its licence was permanently revoked on July 1.

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