"Mayday...Mayday.." Teriak Pilot TransAsia GE235 sebelum Jatuh di Sungai
Pilot of Ill-fated Plane Calls Out `Mayday` Before Crash
Editor : Ismail Gani
Translator : Novita Cahyadi
Taipei (B2B) - Pihak Administrator Penerbangan Sipil Taiwan (CAA) mengatakan bahwa pilot pesawat TransAsia sempat menyerukan "Mayday" sebelum pesawat yang dikemudikannya menabrak jembatan dan jatuh di Sungai Keelung, Taipei, Rabu pagi.
Sebagaimana dilaporkan Kantor Berita Taiwan, CNA bahwa berdasarkan rekaman komunikasi antara kokpit dan menara kontrol yang didapat pihak CAA menyatakan bahwa pilot berteriak "Mayday" tiga kali pada pukul 10.54 waktu Taiwan atau tak lama setelah lepas landas dari Bandar Udara Songshan, Taipei.
Dalam rekaman itu tidak disebutkan adanya petunjuk lain tentang apa yang mungkin terjadi, sehingga menyebabkan pesawat menukik dan menghantam badan jembatan.
Hingga Rabu sore jumlah penumpang yang tewas mencapai 13 orang dari 58 penumpang pesawat domestik jenis ATR72-600 tujuan Pulau Kinmen itu.
Sementara yang lainnya masih terjebak di dalam badan pesawat atau masih tenggelam di dasar Sungai Keelung.
Menurut CAA, Dewan Keamanan Penerbangan akan menyelidiki penyebab kecelakaan itu. "CAA akan membuat penilaian lebih lanjut," kata Direktur Jenderal CAA Lin Tyh-ming.
Lin menjelaskan bahwa pesawat naas itu baru menyelesaikan serangkaian tes keselamatan penerbangan pada 26 Januari 2014. Hal itu juga bagian dari upaya TransAsia dalam memodernisasi armada penerbangannya. Pesawat nahas tersebut dibeli TransAsia pada tahun 2012.
Kecelakaan pesawat tersebut merupakan yang kedua kalinya menimpa maskapai penerbangan TransAsia dalam tujuh bulan terakhir. Pada bulan Juli 2014, pesawat TransAsia ATR72-500 jatuh di Pulau Penghu, Taiwan, yang menewaskan 48 orang penumpang.
Taipei - Taiwan´s Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) said the pilot of a TransAsia Airways plane that crashed into a river in Taipei clearly signaled that an emergency had occurred moments before crashing.
The CAA said that based on a recording of communications between the cockpit of the ill-fated plane and the control tower, the pilot called out "mayday" three times at 10:54 a.m., shortly after it took off from Songshan Airport for Kinmen and just before it crashed.
The recording did not offer any other clues as to what may have happened that caused the plane to go down.
As of 2 p.m., 29 of the 58 people on board had been found, with 12 confirmed dead, 16 injured and one showing no signs of life on the way to the hospital.
The other 29 were thought to still be trapped in the plane´s fuselage or floating in the river.
The CAA said the Aviation Safety Council will investigate the cause of the crash but that in the meantime it will assess whether to ground other ATR72-600 aircraft in Taiwan similar to the model that crashed into the Keelung River on Wednesday.
"The CAA will make a further assessment and then decide whether to ground the same type of planes," said CAA Director-General Lin Tyh-ming.
Lin said the ill-fated plane was delivered within the last year and completed its latest safety checks on Jan. 26.
The new plane was part of an effort by TransAsia in recent years to modernize its aging fleet. It purchased 12 ATR72-600 planes in 2012, with five delivered last year and the order to be completed by 2017.
The accident was the airline´s second in the last seven months. An older TransAsia Airways ATR72-500 crashed in outlying Penghu County in July 2014 after an aborted landing, a disaster that left 49 people dead.
