Training lapses found in wake of 2014 TransAsia crash

Taiwan’s accident investigation agency has raised new concerns about what it determined were inadequate efforts by TransAsia Airways to enhance pilot training in the wake of a 2014 fatal turboprop crash. The final accident report by the government’s Aviation Safety Council, released at the end of January, cited multiple pilot errors, lax corporate safety management and inadequate government oversight in the July 2014 accident that killed 48 of the 58 people on board the twin-engine ATR plane. But one portion of the document, which has received scant media attention, highlights glaring lapses in both pilot performance and evaluation that continued months after the crash. During a one-month-period following the accident, the report indicates, investigators evaluated crews on two dozen TransAsia flights and documented 15 separate instances of improper cockpit actions. They included failures to follow checklists, disregarding appropriate climb speeds and crews executing what are called “unstable approaches,” or potentially hazardous descents in which airspeed was too slow or too fast. The findings amount to the latest official criticism of the carrier’s broader safety culture leading up to and immediately after the crash. The report describes a company that, according to investigators, lacked reliable incident data, failed to mitigate the hazards of a rapidly growing fleet and exhibited “questionable senior management commitment to safety.”<br/>