A photographer and two pilots are missing after an aircraft crashed whilst doing aerial photography on Taiwan's East Coast. The wreckage has been found, but so far no signs of the three missing persons.

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/n...s/2012/08/31/352773/Two-pilots.htm

Local media is reporting it is this aircraft that has gone missing:

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Photo © Sung-Yang Tong

A news report on the radio today (Saturday 1 Sept) said that the aircraft had been found intact, but no sign of the pilots or photographer.

This is getting curiouser and curiouser...

Quote: A Dapeng Airlines plane that went missing two days ago has been found intact in a mountainous area in the eastern county of Hualien, officials at the Civil Aeronautics Administration said today.

http://www.icrt.com.tw/newsroom_news_detail.php?newsId=31235

Maybe they hiked out from the wreckage?

I suppose it depends on the state of the terrain and the state of the wreckage.

Intact ? That seems strange, maybe a translation error or bad journalism. They meant complete, maybe ? If it was intact they would have said something like "landed on flat ground" or something like that.

Quoting Aesma (Reply 3): Intact ? That seems strange, maybe a translation error or bad journalism. They meant complete, maybe ? If it was intact they would have said something like "landed on flat ground" or something like that.

Not necessarily. They could have carried out a forced landing that left the airframe intact but still largely wrecked, in which case it would be wrong to write "landed".

Hopefully they'll be found.

There's a picture in this report. It appears that the aircraft is, indeed, pretty intact. I would say that the crash was very survivable, however, the remote location and poor weather is making getting to the site difficult.

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/n.../09/02/352987/Missing-aircraft.htm

Yep, looks pretty intact... wings and the tail took most of the impact it seems. Definitely survivable.

Have any rescue crews reached it by foot yet? When they say that there's no sign of the crew & photographer, do they mean that they couldn't see them from the air (ie they could be dead inside) or they reached it from the ground and the occupants were nowhere to be seen?

Yes, rescue crews have reached the crash site.

Sadly, all three persons died. The two pilots' bodies were found inside the aircraft, and the photographer's body just next to the aircraft.

http://www.icrt.com.tw/newsroom_news_detail.php?newsId=31241

Some more details in today's newspapers, including a photograph of the aircraft.

From the details in the report, I would say it looks like the aircraft flew straight into the side of the mountain.

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/n...ews/2012/09/03/353025/3-bodies.htm

Reading through the report above, the thing that strikes me is how poorly executed the search and rescue operation was. The litany of errors and incompetence is stunning. I think there's very little chance that the occupants of the aircraft could have been saved, but it's still inexcusable that it took three days to locate the wreckage -- and even then, it was another private company that located the wreckage, rather than the official S&R.

To keep searching in one location when you're receiving emergency beacon signals from a different location is absolutely unprofessional.