Airplane Accidents Thailand

The flight recorders of a Bangkok Airways plane that crashed Nov. 21 and killed 38 people were sent Tuesday to Canada for analysis to determine what caused the crash, officials said. The Canadian-made turboprop plane crashed into a coconut grove on Samui Island. Prasert Prasart-thong-osoth, chairman of the airline, said, "This will determine whether it was a problem with the plane or the pilots or the weather."

A giant U.S. Air Force C-5 Galaxy transport plane missed a Qantas airliner with 382 people aboard by only 50 feet in a near-collision over southern Thailand, the Australian airline said. A statement issued by the Qantas office in Bangkok said the C-5, the largest aircraft used by the U.S. Air Force, was heading north when it passed directly above the Qantas aircraft, which was heading east.

At least 75 people, including several top Asian diplomats, were killed Friday when a Vietnamese jetliner crashed in heavy monsoon rain as it attempted to land at Bangkok's international airport, possibly after it was hit by lightning. Six people, including the two pilots of Air Vietnam Flight 831, survived the crash of the twin-engine plane--an aging, Soviet-built Tupolev 134--and all were taken to Bhumibol Hospital with serious injuries.

A Soviet-built Air Vietnam airliner with about 100 passengers aboard crashed this morning in a heavy rainstorm on its approach to a Bangkok airport and burst into flames, a fire department official said. The Soviet Tupolev 034 crashed about five miles short of Don Muang International Airport into a field near a housing estate, said fire department official Fontip Potisa. "The plane is on fire, and the flames are being whipped by a heavy wind and rainstorm," Fontip said.

Searchers trekked through mountain jungles and scanned the Thai-Burmese border from the air Monday but found no trace of a South Korean jetliner that vanished over Burma with 115 people aboard. Contradicting earlier reports that the wreckage had been found, officials conceded that they have no idea in which country the aircraft might have crashed or why it disappeared Sunday on a flight from Baghdad, Iraq, to Seoul. The search, suspended until daybreak today, is to focus on both land and sea.

The wreckage of a missing South Korean airliner carrying 115 people was found today near a remote Thai village close to the Burmese border, a Thai air force spokesman said. Korean Air Flight 858 disappeared on Sunday as it approached Bangkok for a refueling stop on its flight from Baghdad, Iraq, to Seoul.

Air traffic controller Chongsawasdi Leelarit, who was fired after a Thai Airways crash killed 83 people in August, died Thursday from injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident, hospital officials said Friday.

A Thai airliner with 83 people aboard nose-dived into a bay off the resort island of Phuket on Monday, and all those aboard were believed killed, officials said. Marine police in Phuket, 430 miles south of Bangkok, said there were no known survivors from the Thai Airways Boeing 737. Two Americans, who boarded the plane at the last minute, were thought to be among the victims of the 3:40 p.m. crash. By nightfall, rescuers had recovered 12 bodies.

Three Thai air force F5-E fighter-bombers crashed Friday in heavy rains in northeast Thailand as they were heading to Bangkok for an air show, officials reported. At the show itself, a trainer jet crashed after being hit in the tail by another aircraft. Police said all three F5-E pilots were killed when the planes slammed into a cliff and burst into flames about 100 miles northeast of Bangkok. No other crewmen were aboard.