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Pilot in Taiwan plane crash shut down wrong engine, black boxes show

"Wow, pulled back the wrong side throttle," one of the pilots of the doomed TransAsia flight says on the cockpit voice recorder.

By Doug G. Ware

TAIPEI, Taiwan, July 2 (UPI) -- A plane crash in Taiwan earlier this year that killed 43 people occurred because one of the pilots accidentally shut down the wrong engine, investigators said the plane's "black boxes" indicate.

The plane, a two-engine ATR 72 turboprop operated by TransAsia Airways, went down in the Keelung River on Feb. 4 after the aircraft sustained an engine failure. The plane is designed to be able to fly with just one engine.

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However, the Taiwanese Aviation Safety Council said Wednesday that the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder, the plane's "black boxes," reveal that one of the pilots shut down the engine that was still working -- not the engine that had failed, according to standard operating procedure.

In cutting the power to the plane's only functioning engine, the aircraft fell from the sky. Both pilots were among 43 of 58 on board who were killed in the accident.

According to the CVR transcript, the pilots were alerted on the flight deck that engine number two flamed out shortly after takeoff. The pilot at the controls then disengaged the autopilot and said, "I will pull back engine one throttle."

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By that point, however, engine one was the only thing keeping the TransAsia flight in the sky.

Moments later, the plane's automated stall warning sounded and the pilots felt what's known as the "stick shaker" -- a vibration of the plane's steering columns -- which is a built-in physical indicator that the aircraft is about to stall and fall out of the sky.

Upon discovering that the plane was on the verge of a stall, the secondary pilot said, "wait a second throttle, throttle!"

After unsuccessfully trying to reengage the autopilot, the plane entered a stall and began to fall. About a minute later, the pilot controlling the plane seemingly realized his mistake and said, "wow, pulled back the wrong side throttle."

Seven seconds later, the plane's ground proximity warning system sounded, which includes a voice telling the pilots to "pull up, pull up." One second later, with the plane almost completely on its left side, the left wing clipped a taxi on an overpass and crashed into the river.

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