Taiwanese officials revealed details of TransAsia Flight GE235's deadly crash on Friday.
Aviation Safety Council Executive Director Thomas Wang said that both of the plane's engines lost power and the pilots tried to restart one of them before the crash on February 4.
Preliminary data from the plane's black boxes indicated that the right engine lost power first, triggering an alarm in the cockpit 37 seconds after the plane took off from Taipei.
Although the pilot radioed that the engine had "flamed out" or shut down, investigators found that it had idled, without a change in oil pressure.
The data indicated that the left engine was shut down 46 seconds later by one of the pilots, and a restart attempt was futile. The plane crashed 72 seconds later.
The flight was carrying 58 passengers from Taipei's Songshan airport to the Taiwanese island of Kinmen when it barely cleared a highway overpass and crashed into a shallow river.
The pilot, 42-year-old Liao Chien-tsung, is being called a hero for his skilled maneuvering of the plane between buildings and over the overpass before the crash.
Both Liao and his co-pilot perished in the crash with their hands still on the controls, according to Taiwan's ETToday online news service.
Rescuers pulled 15 survivors and 40 deceased passengers and crew from the wreckage. Three people remain missing. Investigators are still trying to determine why the engines lost power.
