TAIPEI—An esteemed woodworker, a senior military-police officer and two French exchange students were among the passengers on the short-haul TransAsia Airways turboprop plane when it crashed in bad weather on an outlying Taiwanese island.

Nearly 12 hours after Taiwan's deadliest aviation accident in more than a decade, family members on Thursday were taken on charter flights to Penghu, where the plane went down, from Taiwan's main island. They then went to the local morgue to identify the bodies. (Read more about Taiwan's...