China has sent officials to join the probe into the TransAsia Airways plane crash that killed more than 40 passengers.
Three air safety investigators from China are in Taiwan working alongside experts from France and Canada, reported the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
A TransAsia Airways ATR 72-600 aircraft crashed into a river near Taipei last week after hitting an elevated roadway.
More than half of the passengers on the plane were Chinese nationals.
Taiwan’s Aviation Safety Council director Thomas Wang told WSJ that China has not asked for any additional information other than what it is entitled to through the International Civil Aviation Organization guidelines.
Under the guidelines, China can access the scene of the accident and factual information approved for public release by Taiwan, and identify the victims.
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By GlobalDataWang said: "We haven’t felt any political pressure from the China side so far."
Meanwhile, TransAsia has cancelled several planes in order to retrain its pilots.
Taiwan’s aviation regulators are reportedly testing TransAsia pilots’ skills in handling engine failures and the aftermath of such incidents.
However, the test is limited to the 71 pilots who are involved with the ATR fleet of TransAsia, but is not extended to the airways’ Airbus fleet, an official from Taiwan’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) told Reuters.
The decision to test the pilots is reportedly an outcome of the preliminary report released by the ASC.
According to the report, one of the aircraft’s two engines failed almost immediately after take-off and the connection to the second was manually cut-off. Efforts to restart the second engine subsequently failed.
It is not yet clear why the second engine was switched off, industry experts speculate that the crew may have cut the wrong engine.
An unidentified CAA official told Reuters: "There must have been something wrong with what the crew did.
"It’s a very big deal to turn off one engine after take-off. It needs to be double checked by the crew."
