A TransAsia Airways plane with 58 passengers and crew on board careered into a river shortly after take off from a downtown Taipei airport yesterday, killing 23 people and leaving 20 missing, officials said.

Fifteen people survived after the plane lurched between buildings, clipped a taxi and an overpass with its port-side wing and crashed upside down in the shallow water.

Dramatic pictures taken by a motorist and posted on Twitter showed the plane careening over the motorway soon after the turboprop ATR 72-600 aircraft took off in apparently clear weather on a domestic flight for the island of Kinmen.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” a volunteer rescuer surnamed Chen said of the most recent in a series of disasters to hit Asian carriers in the past 12 months.

Mayday, Mayday engine flameout

Television footage showed survivors wearing life jackets wading and swimming clear of wreckage. Others, including a young child, were taken to shore in inflatable boats.

Emergency rescue officials crowded around the partially submerged fuselage of flight GE235, lying on its side in the river, trying to help those on board.

The plane missed apartment buildings by metres, though it was not clear if that was luck or whether the pilot was aiming for the river.

Emergency personnel retrieve a passenger from the wreckage of a TransAsia Airways turboprop ATR 72-600 aircraft after it crashed in a river, in New Taipei City, yesterday.Photos: Reuters

Footage showed a van skidding to a halt on the damaged overpass after barely missing the plane’s wing, with small pieces of the aircraft scattered along the road.

The chief executive of TransAsia, Peter Chen, bowed deeply at a televised news conference as he apologised to passengers and crew. TransAsia’s shares closed down 6.9 percent in heavy trade, its biggest percentage decline since late 2011.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said his government had offered Taiwan any help necessary following the crash. The last communication from one of the aircraft’s pilots was “Mayday Mayday engine flameout”, according to an air traffic control recording on liveatc.net.

A flameout occurs when the fuel supply to the engine is interrupted or when there is faulty combustion, resulting in an engine failure. Twin-engined aircraft, however, are usually able to keep flying even when one engine has failed.

The plane was powered by two Pratt & Whitney PW127M engines. Pratt & Whitney is part of United Technologies.

The head of Taiwan’s civil aviation authority, Lin Tyh-ming, said the aircraft last underwent maintenance on January 26.

The wreckage being recovered later yesterday.

The pilot had 4,916 flying hours under his belt and the co-pilot had 6,922 hours, he said.

Taipei’s downtown Songshan airport, the smaller of the city’s two airports, provides mostly domestic flights but also connections to Japan, China and South Korea.

A statement from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said 31 of those on board were tourists from the southeastern city of Xiamen, close to Taiwan’s Kinmen island.

TransAsia is Taiwan’s third-largest carrier. One of its ATR 72-500 planes crashed while trying to land at Penghu Island last July, killing 48 of the 58 passengers and crew on board.