Sixty-six people are confirmed dead and around 20 are unaccounted for after a budget airliner crashed on the Thai resort of Phuket in driving rain today, the airport director said.

 

The flight from Bangkok was carrying 123 passengers and five crew, airport officials said. Flight manifests at Phuket airport suggested that well over half those on board were foreign, mainly European holidaymakers.

 

 

Amid conflicting casualty reports, police said that some people had been rescued alive from the wreckage of the MD-80, which was operated by Thai budget carrier One-Two-Go, owned by Orient Thai Airways.

 

“The confirmed dead is 66 now. Forty-two survived and were hospitalised. The rest are still missing,” said Pornchai Eua-aree, the director of Phuket airport.

 

“There are absolutely foreigners among the dead because almost 70 percent of passengers in this flight were foreigners,” he added.

 

Among those known to have survived are eight Britons, two Australians and one Irish citizen, along with an Iranian and seven Thais. Germans, Italians and Israelis were among the others being treated in local hospitals.

 

The aircraft apparently slid off the runway in the rain, slamming into the nearby jungle and catching fire. Television pictures showed smoke rising from the wreckage, amid a downpour, and the fuselage broken in two and partly smashed into the ground.

 

The airport has been closed as emergency officials comb the wreckage.

 

The pilot had asked for clearance to land and it was not immediately clear what went wrong, said civil aviation official Chiasak Angkauwan.

 

“The airplane asked to land but due to the weather in Phuket - strong wind and heavy rain - maybe the pilot did not see the runway clearly,” he told TiTV television. "We won’t know what really happened until we hear the black box."

 

Chaisak Angsuwan, director general of the Air Transport Authority of Thailand, said the plane had crashed in heavy rain and then split into two parts. It skidded off the runaway and crashed into a wooded area, he said.

 

“The visibility was poor as the pilot attempted to land. He decided to make a go-around but the plane lost balance and crashed,” he said. “It was torn into two parts.”

 

An unnamed doctor at a central emergency reporting centre in Bangkok told Thai television that initial reports indicated more than 100 people on board the plane had been taken to hospital, injured or dead.

 

“Deaths could not be confirmed. Most people were injured from broken legs and wounds on the head. The passengers were both Thai and foreigners,” the doctor said.

 

Phuket, the biggest of Thailand’s islands, is a popular holiday destination located in the Andaman Sea. It was last touched by major tragedy during the Asian Boxing Day tsunami of 2005, when 300 people died and 400 buildings were destroyed by a powerful tidal wave.

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2466222.ece

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