Eighty-seven passengers and crew are confirmed dead from yesterday’s (16 September) crash on landing of a One-Two-Go Boeing MD-82 on the Thai resort island of Phuket.
Rescue officials in Phuket say 87 of the 130 passengers and crew on board the 24-year-old MD-82 are confirmed to have died in the crash while 43 people are being treated in hospital. Some of the survivors have life-threatening injuries.
An official at One-Two-Go’s crisis hotline in Bangkok says two of the 43 survivors are cabin crew and the rest are passengers. She says that on board the aircraft were 123 passengers and seven crewmembers, 78 of them foreign nationals. Both pilots and three of the five flight attendants were killed.
The airline official says the MD-82 was operating as flight OG269 from Bangkok’s secondary Don Muang airport. It departed Bangkok at around 14:30 and its scheduled arrival time was 15:50.
The aircraft ran off the runway on landing in heavy rain, breaking apart and bursting into flames.
One-Two-Go launched four years ago as Thailand’s first low-cost carrier, operating MD-80-series and Boeing 747 ‘Classic’ aircraft on domestic routes. It is a subsidiary of Orient Thai Airlines, which mainly operates international services.
The One-Two-Go official says the MD-82 was registered as HS-OMG.
According to Flight’s ACAS database, HS-OMG was built in November 1983 and was originally operated by the former Trans World Airlines. It had a manufacturer’s serial number of 49183.
Powered by Pratt & Whitney JT8D-217 engines, the aircraft had only been in service with One-Two-Go since March this year, when it was purchased by parent company Orient Thai.
ACAS shows that as of November last year the aircraft had accumulated nearly 63,000 flight hours and more than 33,000 takeoffs and landings.
Source: FlightGlobal.com
