87 people died after Flight OG
269 crashed on landing in bad
weather at the Thai resort of
Phuket. The jet, carrying 123
passengers, a number of them
foreigners form the US,
France, Sweden, Iran and
Australia, crashed after
hitting the runway heavily in
strong winds and heavy rain.
The Thai airliner involved in
the Phuket air
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87 people died after Flight OG
269 crashed on landing in bad
weather at the Thai resort of
Phuket. The jet, carrying 123
passengers, a number of them
foreigners form the US,
France, Sweden, Iran and
Australia, crashed after
hitting the runway heavily in
strong winds and heavy rain.
The Thai airliner involved in
the Phuket air disaster was
very old in terms of aircraft
years. Official records show
that Sunday's Thai disaster
was the 13th crash involving
an MD80 series aircraft since
1981 in which lives were
lost.Passengers and crew,
including dozens of European
touristss, rushed for the
plane's emergency exits,
trying to escape as flames
spread through the
aircraft.Built by then US
airframe maker
McDonnell-Douglass in 1983,
the MD82 had flown 64,679
hours and completed 34,202
landings.Branded with the
serial number 49183, the
130-seat twin-jet was the
1129th McDonnell-Douglass
built, according to its
official service record kept
by Boeing. It was flying well
beyond an age when other
carriers would have declared
the machine obsolete. Emirates
Airlines sells its image on
not having a plane more than
five years old. The One-Two-Go
Airlines MD82 is believed to
have done most of its flying
in the United States where
MD80 and 90 series jets
operated on regional feeder
services. One-Two-Go Airlines,
which launched in 2002, had
bought the aicraft secondhand
and it is still uncertain how
many owners the plane had.A
similar incident to the Thai
disaster occurred at Solo,
Indonesia, on November 30 2004
where a LionAir MD82 skidded
off the runway in heavy rain
and broke up.

Category News & Politics

Tags Thai, airliner, Phuket, air, disaster, Thailand, crash, jet, fire