NEWS reports in global media show that a TransAsia Airways flight crashed into a river in Taiwan killing at least 32 passengers on board. Disclosure said someone in the cockpit of flying aircraft made a Mayday call because of a problem shortly before the plane crashed but it is not clear whether that was from the pilot or not. The passenger plane clipped a bridge and plunged into a river in Taipei.
Rescuers pulled out survivors from the submerged wreck of the twin-engine turboprop aircraft, which was carrying fifty-eight passengers from Taipei to Kinmen, off the coast of the Chinese province of Fujian. So far 11 people are missing and most of the 15 people survived the crash were injured. Two other people, who were in a car on the bridge that was clipped by the wing of the plane as it went down, were also hurt. Reports said a similar aircraft of the same airline had crashed only few months back and it led people to wonder whether the airline management is doing enough to ensure mechanical maintenance of the fleet.
Plane crash has become highly threatening to people undertaking journey from one global spot to another. Two Malaysian Boeings crashed last year and one of them is still missing presumably in the Indian occasion. Meanwhile, another AirAsia plane crashed in the Java Sea last month making air travel highly risky. We understand that air travel can’t be stopped, so also we can’t leave people’s life vulnerable to air crash any moment. We believe that airlines can only protect passengers’ life with utmost safety checks and developing more sophisticated know-how to detect vulnerabilities before-hand. Especially the International Civil Aviation Authority needs to be more active in enforcing the safety standards at all costs. But on top of it, there can’t be alternative to human vigilance over the technical check ups. It must go hand in hand to save people life flying in the air.
