Daily Air operated Penghu-Qimei route out of contract, could be fined NT$300,000

 Report by : Gan Yung Chyan, KUCINTA SETIA / Image : The Liberty Times

According to Taiwanese newspaper The Liberty Times, a Daily Air DHC-6-400 aircraft took off from Penghu Magong Airport to Qimei in Taiwan on 29 November 2022. According to regulations, the pilot should wait for the tower’s instructions before taking off, but the pilot let go of the cart without the tower’s permission. Theair traffic control tower personnel found out that they called "hold position!" The Civil Aviation Administration stated that if the investigation is true, the pilot and co-pilot could be given points and fined between NT$60,000 and NT$300,000.

Lin Junliang, deputy director of the Civil Aviation Administration, responded that the violation accident was still under investigation.

Guo Burui, general manager of Daily Airs, confirmed that the two pilots were flying the flight from Penghu to Qimei that day, and the operating procedures were implemented according to the regulations, and the plane entered the runway. On that day, the co-pilot surnamed Xu was a teacher pilot, and the pilot surnamed Zhou who was driving had just completed the training. Because the teacher pilot surnamed Xu was waiting on the runway, he was instructing the pilot to teach the instrument indication. The pilot mistakenly thought that it was performing a normal operation. The take-off procedure requires the vehicle to be loosened and the accelerator pushed. The pilot, a teacher surnamed Xu, immediately calls a stop when he finds that the fuselage is moving, and takes into account the length of the runway before re-executing the take-off.

He emphasized that the company had voluntarily reported this incident on 29 November 2022, and the company had made improvements within the company so that pilots would not make such mistakes again, and the improvement had been completed at the end of last year.

Guo Burui emphasized that the pilot has just completed training and is also a former retired pilot from other airlines. He has rich flying experience and the flight is safe.

However, it was rumoured that the notification form filled out by Daily Air falsely filled in the column of suspected violations from "Take off without permission" to "Line up and wait without following the instructions of the tower", questioning the fraud. Guo Burui said that it has been confirmed that the column line up and wait for suspected violations was the standard term for the first sentence of the tower call at that time. The contents of the "Event Description" box in the proactive reporting form have been restored to the original state at that time in detail, and there is no fraud.