Thai investigators sift through Phuket plane wreck

I love Thailand and Phuket. Some reports say perhaps 90% of the passengers (100) died. This is a blow to Thai tourism and a ghastly blow to the friends and families of the dead and injured.

Thai air investigators sifted though the wreckage on Monday of a budget airliner that crashed on the resort isle of Phuket, killing 88 people as it broke up while trying to land in driving rain.

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

Both pilots were killed, deputy transport minister Sansern Wong-Chaum said, but 42 people survived a crash that is likely to raise more safety questions for 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 "black box" flight data recorder has been recovered and much of the investigation is likely to focus on the weather conditions as the plane, flown by Bangkok-based low-cost operator One-Two-Go, was coming in to land.

"We will have to wait for the actual cause of the accident. We will send the black box to the United States. It will take one week to analyse," Sansern told Thailand's Channel 7 television.

Survivors spoke of torrential rain and trees bent over in the wind, and several accounts suggested the pilot attempted to land, but then aborted.

"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."

Via Reuters.