Thai investigators sift through Phuket plane wreck

THAILAND: Investigators sifted on Monday though the wreckage of a budget airliner that crashed on the Thai resort island of Phuket, killing 88 people as it broke up while trying to land in driving rain and heavy wind.

As well as looking for clues as to why the McDonnell Douglas MD-82 veered off the runway, smashed into a densely wooded embankment and burst into flames, rescue workers still had to recover five bodies from the wreckage.

Both pilots were killed, deputy transport minister Sansern Wong-Chaum said, but 42 people survived a crash likely to raise more safety questions about the dozens of budget carriers that have sprung up across Asia in the last decade.

Five survivors were in critical condition, with burns to 60 percent of their bodies, hospital officials said.

The island, dubbed the "Pearl of the Andaman", suffered major devastation in the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

The "black box" flight data recorder was recovered and much of the investigation was likely to focus on the weather as the plane, flown by Bangkok-based low-cost operator One-Two-Go, was coming in to land. The Bangkok Post newspaper quoted a senior aviation official as saying the pilot told the control tower he was aborting the landing because he could not see the runway.

Survivors spoke of torrential rain and trees bent over in the wind.

"The pilot tried to bring the plane back up. He started to turn right and made a sharp turn right and then the plane went into the embankment," Millie Furlong, a 23-year-old waitress from Canada, told Reuters in hospital.

"I saw the grass and knew we were going to crash. It was very quick." Meanwhile an AFP report quating an airline official said that a total of 55 foreigners were among 88 killed when the Thai jet crashed on the resort island of Phuket.

"The latest death toll, which I got at 4am (2100 Sunday GMT) Monday morning, is 88 dead," said Udom Tantiprasongchai, president of budget carrier One-Two-Go, which operated the doomed plane.

"Of these, there are 55 foreigners. Forty-two people survived," he told AFP. Citizens from Australia and France are believed to be among the dead, officials and media in those countries have reported.

Phuket, Monday, Reuters, AFP