In an uncommon move, Taiwan authorities have already released a printout of part of the flight data from TransAsia GE23 that crashed minutes after takeoff in Taipei on Wednesday. The data seems to reveal that the pilots inexplicably shut down the good engine after reporting a “flame-out” in the other engine in a Mayday call to air traffic control.
The data is in the form of a series of graphs that shows the state of the engines against a timeline and altitude.
At 45 seconds into the flight, the temperature for the left engine dropped sending the engine into autofeather mode. Autofeathering reduces the drag on the propellers so a plane can glide longer when a engine fails.
The aircraft continued to climb at this point on the power of the right engine. That’s when the mistake was made.
