The latest on the Phuket-Airport disaster
Twenty-four hours on and we still don’t know much more about the Phuket -Airport disaster than we did yesterday. The cause of the crash will remain a mystery for some time. Although both black-box recorders were recovered, analyzing the data will take about one week.
The story at the moment is that the pilot had to abort his landing, which was why he tried to take off again. Speculation that 56-year-old Indonesian pilot Areef Mulyadi was inexperienced was laid to rest today, as a number of reports came out that he had a wealth of flying experience.
The bodies are still in the makeshift morgue at Phuket Airport Hall. The exact number of dead has fluctuated between 87 and 91 depending on which report you read. The number of survivors is currently, as far as I’m concerned, at 41, meaning 89 people died.
Prime Minister Surayud was here this afternoon for a quick visit. The airport officially re-opened at about 4 pm. Our office was inundated with calls from foreign media and random people. I almost went on a Spanish radio show but thought better of it in the end.
Heavy rain affected the clean-up today and the wreckage is still there I think. This came from The Nation today:
An American pilot who landed just prior to the One Two Go plane reportedly told CNN that the landing was one of the toughest he had ever undertaken – indicating that the weather conditions were severe.
The final call over whether to land or not rests with the pilot. It will be interesting to see what we learn from the black box recorders.
One positive thing from Sunday was the speedy response from rescue units, who were on the scene within 10 minutes and did a damn good job by all accounts. Sadly, there has been a lot of practice for this sort of thing after the tsunami in 2004. Hats off to the rescue workers though.
Not much more to add at this stage. The big fear right now is that this will have an impact on the upcoming high season, which many were confident would be the island’s busiest to date. We’re already midway through a very busy green season (low season), but this has got to have an effect; the news has been heard all around the world.
Techno' tags: Thailand, Phuket
You feel that you want to give those people who have been involved in this horrible tragedy a big hug in order to comfort them even though you know very well that it is not going to soothe their shattered hearts.
Early next year, I am going to visit the area, regardless of what has happened.
Rescue workers certainly did a hell of a job, it seems some passengers acted like heroes too.
Conflicting and uncertain information seems to be common to this kind of accidents, especially with a lot of news agencies who want to bring some kind of news every time.
Whether it will be bad for the coming season, I'm not sure, after 9/11 and SARS, air passengers seem to be over accidents quite soon. And statistical, landing on Phuket is much more safe now.
A weird coincidence was that on 11 September, I received an e-mail from One-Two-Go about their latest offer: Bangkok – Phuket for 899 baht all inclusive.
OK. Nothing new here. Can we go back to property girls?
Ummmm, OK.
Actually, maybe you're right. Sales girls, where are you? Come back!