A few hours after the fatal plane crash on Penghu islands in southwestern Taiwan, a Weibo user tweeted her TransAsia flight ticket after she flew back to Mainland China from Kaohsiung, showing how she could have been among the 48 fatalities in the crash.

"I really can't help showing my [TransAsia] plane ticket, because I'm really lucky," she tweeted in Chinese.

Like Us on Facebook

15 other people were lucky as well. Ten of them were passengers on the plane, and five were residents in the small community near the airport where the aircraft crashed.

The latest update shows that 48 people were killed after TransAsia Airway plane, GE222, crashed at about 7:20 p.m. local time on Wednesday while trying to make an emergency landing in stormy weather. 

According to the China News, Yeh Gen-chuang, a national renowned artist, is also among 48 killed. Yeh was listed as  a national treasure in 2010 for his exquisite painting and carpentry skills.

The plane slammed into the ground in Xixi village just a mile from its destination, Magong airport. It set two empty houses on fire, but did not cause any death on the ground.

Taiwanese authorities said the airplane carried 58 passengers, including four crewmembers and two French nationals and four children.

The Taiwan news reports that the aircraft was delayed for more than an hour and half because of the extreme weather. 

Although Taiwanese authorities suspected Typhoon Matmo was the major cause of the accident, an official at the Civil Aeronautics Administration reported to Reuters that "bad weather at the time of the crash did not exceed international regulations for landing."

The New York Times also reported that a nine-member group from Taiwan's Aviation Safety council was scheduled to fly to Magong late Wednesday to start further investigation. 

The Civil Aeronautics Administration disclosed the identities of the two pilots: Li Yi-liang 60, and Chiang Kuan-hsing, 39, both of whom had accumulated more than 20,000 flight hours.

Chinese president Xi Jinping and Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou are both saddend by the fatality. Xi learned about the accident while he was on his Latin America tour. He offered immediate condolences to Taiwan afterwards.

TransAsia was founded in 1952 as Taiwan's first private civilian airline. It's a budget airline that mainly flies ATR-72 aircraft for domestic and short-haul international flights to neighbor countries, such as China, Japan, Singapore and South Korea.

As of 9 p.m. local time, various cable trucks and eight sets of iceboxes that were going to carry dead passengers' bodies have been safely shipped to the Penghu islands.