PHUKET (Thailand), Sept 16: A Thai passenger plane crashed and burst into flames as it landed in driving rain on the resort island of Phuket, killing 88 people, including foreigners, officials said.
A senior civil aviation official said the pilot of the MD-82, operated by budget carrier One-Two-Go and carrying 123 passengers and seven-member crew had received permission to abort the landing at the last minute.
Instead the plane smashed onto the runway, careered into an embankment and broke in two, witnesses and officials reported.
“The plane just dropped really fast and then jerked back up. The right wing hit a tree and then the plane hit the ground,” said 23-year-old survivor Parinyawich Chusaeng.
“The people all around me were burning. Some on the floor and some standing, and they were on fire,” he told AFP.
Marine Keisel, from Paris, watched the disaster unfold from a following plane.
“When the plane landed it caught fire,” she told AFP at Phuket airport. “We could see the fire coming out of it. It was chaos inside my plane.” Television images showed the blackened, smouldering jet lying on grass off the runway by a fence and close to trees. Officials and rescuers could be seen carrying bodies covered with blankets from the wreckage in the pouring rain.
Health Minister Mongkol Na Songkhla said in a statement that 87 people had died and 43 survived, accounting for all those on board. Initial reports had put the total on board at 128.
Officials believe 15 survivors were Thai and 28 were foreign but were still verifying the identities of the dead and injured. Deputy transport minister Sansern Wongcha-um earlier said there were at least 70 foreigners on board.
British passengers were among the fatalities, according to a Thai official quoted by Sky News.
“Some victims died of fire, some were thrown out of the airplane,” deputy provincial governor Vorapot Ratsima told AFP.
Five people were in critical condition at the Bangkok Hospital Phuket, where 30 survivors had been admitted to stay overnight, hospital director Kongkiat Kespechai said.
Among those being treated were citizens of Thailand, Germany, Austria, Britain, Australia, Ireland and Iran.
Other hospitals in Phuket, Thailand’s largest island and a hugely popular resort destination, said they were treating people from the Netherlands, Sweden and Italy.
“There are bodies piled up inside the smouldering wreckage,” Vorapot told Channel 11 television earlier. “What we have to do is to identify and return dead bodies to their relatives.”
The health ministry said bodies had been laid out at the Phuket airport terminal due to a lack of hospital refrigerators.
PHUKET (Thailand), Sept 16: A Thai passenger plane crashed and burst into flames as it landed in driving rain on the resort island of Phuket, killing 88 people, including foreigners, officials said.
