Captain of TransAsia Flight 235 shut off working engine
 

Yikes.
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Captain of TransAsia Flight 235 shut off working engine after other failed: Report
(CNN)

"Wow, pulled back the wrong side throttle."

These are the words of the captain of TransAsia Airways Flight GE235, eight seconds before the plane clipped a bridge and plunged into a Taiwanese river mere minutes after takeoff, killing 43 people on board.

The latest report by Taiwan's Aviation Safety Council into the February crash confirms that the captain of the ATR 72-600 turboprop aircraft mistakenly switched off the plane's working engine after the other lost power.

The plane is designed to be able to be flown on one engine.

The report also showed that the captain had failed simulator training less than a year earlier, partly because he had demonstrated a lack of knowledge of how to respond to engine flameout at takeoff.

The aircraft, which was less than a year old, flew perilously between buildings and clipped a bridge and a taxi before crashing into the shallow Keelung River in Taiwan's capital, Taipei.

Fifteen of the 58 people on board the flight, all mainland Chinese or from Taiwan, survived.

The plane's entire cockpit crew was killed in the crash, authorities said.

Engine flameout

The findings come in the Aviation Safety Council's Factual Data Collection Group Report, a presentation of facts found in investigating the crash.

The report draws no conclusions and makes no recommendations, and a final report is to follow in April 2016.

The report showed that less than a minute after takeoff, once the plane had climbed 1,200 feet, a master warning sounded, and a display showed that there had been an engine flameout, or power failure, in engine 2.

The captain responded by pulling back on the throttle -- but on the other, working engine, shutting it off about 46 seconds after the other engine failed, causing the aircraft to stall.

The mistake was not noticed until about two minutes later, when the pilot managed to restore some power to engine 1, but it was too late to avoid the crash.

More: Flight captain: 'Wow, pulled back the wrong throttle' - CNN.com

"Pilot error", sucks!

Guy should never have been in the cockpit.

Wow. Glad I don't have to travel in Asia.

shiiiiiitttttttttttttttttttttttt!

Very troubling that he was allowed to be captain after simulator fail. He also had trouble with training flights for the same reason, engine failure on takeoff. Probably the most critical part of the flight. Also, two minutes to figure out what they did wrong? "Working foot, working engine". Pilot training outside the U.S. seems in a sad state. Air France 447 comes to mind, stall recovery.

Air France was a lot more than just pilot error or pilot training.

Not diagnosing which engine had failed was an issue for the aircraft I flew.

The cockpit gauges and warning lights presented a confusing picture at exactly the wrong time for the pilot(s) to be hunting for information.

I flew at least 200 hours in a simulator, as did many others, trying to get the sequence right and change the presentation to the pilots in the cockpit.

Human factors takes work in aviation: We lost at least two H-60s due to improper diagnosis of which engine had actually failed. The key was the poor failing engine failed in steps, often "rolling back" and letting the good engine do all the work, which then exhibited the failure modes we had been trained to identify.

Crews are taught NOT to touch any power controls for failures of this type during a critical phase and only until a safe altitude is achieved which is typically 1500-2000 feet over the highest obstacle. Unless there is a fire, there is no reason to.

what if a/s was going below blue line? of course you would pull back if you were trending below Vmc that's a choice between going in on the belly or inverted

more common than we think to pull back the good engine BUT there should have been an indicator telling which one was out