TransAsia Airways
Knowing that several Standard Operating Procedures were violated in Flight 222, especially descending below the Minimum Descent Altitude, investigators then tried to identify if the problems came from TransAsia Airways itself. Interviews with some of the pilots of TransAsia Airways found that routine violations from the Standard Operating Procedure were normal. In particular, the flight crew were known to descend below the minimum before acquiring the required visual references. The Taiwanese AIC had known of these routine violations in TransAsia Airways before, as they had already investigated incidents involving TransAsia Airways before Flight 222. In response to the previous investigation, the airline implemented several safety actions to eliminate Standard Operating Procedure violations. The safety actions implemented by TransAsia Airways were inadequate and ineffective, thus Standard Operating Procedure violations continued as usual. While there was a supervisor for the Standards and Training Section, the high flight times and instructional workload of the check and training pilots assigned to assist him was such that they had insufficient time available to perform support tasks such as reviewing Standard Operating Procedure training, audits, and operational safety risk assessments. In addition, the shortage of standards pilots may have been another reason why the Standard Operating Procedures were not as effective as they could have been.