Bangkok Post
Date: 15 Apr 2016
By: WRITER: AFP
TAIPEI – Taiwan has charged two air traffic control officers with causing a
Rescue workers and firefighters search through the wreckage of TransAsia Airways flight GE222 after it crashed near the airport at Magong on the Penghu island chain on July 24, 2014
TransAsia plane crash that killed 49 people in 2014, the first prosecutions in the country’s worst air disaster for a decade.
The plane’s two pilots, who died in the crash, were also blamed for flying Flight GE222 into a residential area as the aircraft attempted to land at Magong city airport in the Penghu islands.
“The four people are found to have been negligent in their duties over this crash,” the Penghu prosecutors said in a statement Thursday, referring to the two air traffic control officers and the pair of pilots.
The pilots will not be prosecuted, but ground staff in charge of air traffic that day are being sued for criminal negligence, which carries a jail term of up to five years.
Taiwan’s aviation body in January said the pilots had caused the crash on July 23, 2014, by flying too low as they tried to land during a typhoon. [FULL STORY]
