NEW YORK » The deadly crash of a TransAsia plane into a river in Taiwan is again focusing the world’s attention on the safety challenges facing fast-growing Asian airlines.

TransAsia Airways has been adding new routes rapidly since the Taiwan­ese carrier went public in 2011. TransAsia and others like it are rushing to keep up with a travel boom driven by the region’s growing middle class.

The ease and increasing affordability of flying helps fuel economic growth and a better lifestyle for Asian consumers. But as airlines carry more passengers across increasingly crowded skies, they are also racing to train enough pilots.

"The demand is almost exceeding the supply," said John M. Cox, who spent 25 years flying for US Airways and is now CEO of consultancy Safety Operating Systems.

Quickly growing airlines need to maintain standards as they hire more pilots, maintenance workers, dispatchers and flight attendants. Cox said the Asian carriers are currently meeting those marks, but it’s a big challenge.

TransAsia Airways Flight 235 crashed Wednesday shortly after takeoff from Taipei, Taiwan, with 58 people aboard. Dramatic video from a car’s dashboard camera captured the moment that the plane, tilting madly, clipped a bridge before landing in a shallow river. At least 40 people were killed.

It was the second fatal accident in just over six months for the airline and its seventh serious accident in the past two decades, according to aerospace publication Flightglobal. It comes barely a month after one of Indonesian carrier AirAsia’s planes crashed into the Java Sea traveling from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore, killing all 162 aboard.

As Southeast Asia’s economies grow, more people have money to travel, and airlines are adding planes to whisk them across the region.

Aircraft manufacturers Airbus, ATR, Boeing, Bombardier and Embraer delivered 1,543 new planes to airlines last year. That means 30 planes rolled off their collective assembly lines every week, the fastest production rate in the history of commercial aviation.

Most of those aircraft went to Asia.

TransAsia Airways, Taiwan’s third-biggest airline, has been part of that buying spree. The airline was founded in 1951 but has undergone a growth spurt following its market debut on the Taiwanese stock exchange in 2011. It has added about two dozen routes to mainland China and other Asian cities. TransAsia flies about 20 planes from its base at Taipei’s Sung­shan Airport and has enough new aircraft orders to double its fleet within five years.

The turboprop plane that crashed Wednesday was less than a year old, according to Ascend, an aviation consultancy. It was an ATR 72-600, made by a joint venture of Airbus Group and Italy’s Ale­nia Aer­mac­chi. The aircraft was powered by two Pratt & Whitney PW100-127M engines. TransAsia also flies Airbus jets on some short-haul routes around Asia.

The airline’s most serious crash occurred in July, when 48 people were killed after another turboprop plane crashed on an island off mainland China during stormy weather.

A preliminary finding by Taiwan’s Aviation Safety Council, based on cockpit voice and flight data recorders, suggested Friday that pilots of the twin-propeller plane that crashed in Taiwan’s capital may have reacted to a stalled-engine alarm by shutting down the wrong engine.

Keith McGuire, a former accident investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, said rapid growth can strain an airline’s pilot training and maintenance but that carriers with good safety and training programs can handle it.