XIXI, Taiwan (AP) — The 10 survivors of Taiwan’s worst air disaster in more than a decade include a
34-year-old woman who called her father after scrambling from the wreckage and seeking help at a nearby
home.
Hung Yu-ting escaped through a hole in the fuselage that opened up after the plane plowed into homes
Wednesday while attempting to land on the outlying resort island of Penghu, killing 48 people.
“She called me on the phone to say the plane had crashed and exploded but that she had already crawled
out and I should come right away to get her,” said Hung’s father, Hung Chang-ming, who lives just a few
hundred meters (yards) from the crash site.
Hung rushed to the scene, but his daughter had already been taken away by rescuers.
“When I was halfway there the fire was still really big, but it was smaller when I arrived on the scene,”
Hung told reporters. “There were two other injured outside and the first ambulance had already taken
away three, including my daughter.”
Hung Chang-ming joined rescuers and other residents in putting out the fire and rescuing other survivors
before going to the hospital to check on his daughter.
Hung Yu-ting was recovering Friday from burns to her arms, legs and back suffered during her escape. The
condition of the other survivors wasn’t immediately known.
Other relatives weren’t so luckly, some recalling the last phone conversations with their loved ones.
Shu Chi-tse said he had spoken to his son, Shu Chong-tai, just before the flight left the southern city
of Kaohsiung on Taiwan’s main island for a short ride west across the Taiwan Strait.
“He is a good boy. He cares for me and his mom. He loves his grandma a lot,” Shu said.
Among the dead were all four members of the flight crew, a family of six and a family of four. They
included several children, like 9-year-old Ho Po-yu, who was returning home to Penghu with his mother
after attending a summer camp for young choral singers.
Stormy weather and low visibility are thought to have been factors in the crash of the twin propeller
ATR-72 operated by TransAsia Airways.
The investigation is expected to focus on a four-minute gap between the pilot’s request for a second
approach and the plane’s crashing into village homes at 7:10 p.m., during which visibility dropped by
half.
One of the questions is why did the pilots decide to proceed with the flight despite rough weather on the
heels of a typhoon that had forced the cancellation of about 200 flights earlier in the day. However,
aviation authorities said conditions were safe for flying and two other planes had landed at Penghu that
day prior to the crash.
The mother of one of the victims screamed at TransAsia Chairman Vincent Lin when he arrived to pay
respects at the funeral hall Friday.
Lin kneeled down, bowed to the woman and apologized.
“Give me back my son, he is only 27 years old . He is still young, but now he is lying there at the
morgue. I want my son back,” she cried.
“This is an unpredictable tragedy. The priority for us is to assist victims’ relatives,” Lin later told
reporters as Buddhist monks conducted rituals for the dead.
Local media reported Friday that the plane’s cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder had been
sent to the main island of Taiwan for analysis. One of the devices was damaged in the crash and ensuing
fire, and it wasn’t immediately clear when results of the investigation would be made public.
The TransAsia crash was Taiwan’s first deadly civil aviation accident since 2002, when a China Airlines
plane went down shortly after takeoff, killing 225.
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Associated Press writer Christopher Bodeen in Beijing contributed to this report.