TAIPEI, Taiwan — One of the two engines on TransAsia Airways Flight 235 went idle 37 seconds after takeoff, and the pilots apparently shut off the other before making a futile attempt to restart it, Taiwan’s top aviation safety official said Friday.

It was unclear why the second engine was shut down, since the plane was capable of flying with one engine. Taiwan’s official China News Agency said investigators were looking into the possibility of “professional error.”

Additional Images

This image from video shows TransAsia Airways Flight 235 moments before it crashed Wednesday in Taipei, Taiwan. The Associated Press

Wednesday’s crash into a river in Taipei minutes after takeoff killed at least 35 people and left eight missing. Fifteen people were rescued with injuries after the accident, which was captured in a dramatic dashboard camera video that showed the ATR 72 propjet banking steeply and scraping a highway overpass before it hurtled into the Keelung River.

There would be no reason to have shut down the good engine, experts said.

“It’s a mistake,” said John M. Cox, a former US Airways pilot and now head of a safety-consulting company. “There are procedures that pilots go through – safeguards – when you’re going to shut down an engine, particularly close to the ground. Why that didn’t occur here, I don’t know.”

Multi-engine planes, whether jets or turboprops like the ATR, are designed to fly on one engine. When an engine quits, one technique that pilots often use, Cox said, is to identify and tell each other which engine is still running, then for one of them to place a hand behind the throttle controlling that good engine – guarding against an accidental shutdown.

Cox said it is too early to draw certain conclusions but it’s likely that the crew’s failure to control the plane and shutting down the operating engine “will be part of the causal factors to this accident.”

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