Probe into cause of Thai aircrash goes on

Probe into cause of Thai aircrash goes on

SURAT THANI, Thailand (Reuters): Police and volunteers combed the wreckage of a Thai Airways jet on Monday seeking clues to why it crashed, killing 101 of 146 people on board.

About 200 police, army search and rescue teams and local volunteers waded through the flooded plantation where the Airbus A310-200 came down in driving rain on Friday.

"We are retrieving the wreckage and collecting the evidence as much as we can," Police Col. Opas Sanasen, leading the operation, told Reuters.

Thousands of pieces would be collected and painstakingly reassembled in a nearby aircraft hangar so investigators could establish the cause of the accident, officials said.

The plane's cockpit voice and flight data recorders, recovered after the crash, would soon be sent to Canada or the Netherlands for decoding, officials said.

The 101 dead included the pilots. The 45 survivors, who included 12 foreigners, were rescued after crawling or being pulled from the burning wreckage. Survivors said swift action by local volunteers saved many lives.

The Director-General of Thailand's Civil Aviation Department, Sawat Sitthiwong, confirmed on Monday that Surat Thani airport, where the Airbus was trying to land, lacked some equipment to allow aircraft to land safely in bad weather.

Sawat told a news conference the airport's Instrument Landing System (ILS) had been removed about six months ago to allow runway extension work. The airport serves the popular island resort of Koh Samui and sees heavy tourist traffic.

But he said the absence of the equipment would not have been the only cause for the crash of the plane because the airport had a radio navigation system commonly used at other airports.

"I don't think that (the absence of the ILS) would be the only cause of the crash," Sawat said.

The airport's radio navigation system had been checked as recently at September, he said.

Aviation sources say the radio navigation system is less accurate because it relies on visual sighting of the runway once the aircraft has descended to 500 feet.

Survivors of the plane crash said the pilot had complained of poor visibility, had twice attempted and failed to land the aircraft and was making a third attempt when it plunged in the dark into flooded swampland about three kilometers from the airport.

The aircraft caught fire after hitting the ground and then exploded. Wreckage was scattered over a wide area of about one square km.

The chairman of Thai Airways, Thamnoon Wanglee, dismissed suggestions that the state of the aircraft or its age may have contributed to the accident.

The Airbus, fitted with General Electric engines, was delivered in April 1986 and had logged 23,000 flight hours.

"I don't think the condition of the plane is one of the reasons behind the crash. Thai (Airways) has strict maintenance standards and regularly checks its aircraft," he said.

A local army unit of about 200 soldiers brought cranes and steel cutters to the crash site on Monday to cut up the big bits of the fuselage prior to their removal and reassembly.

"We plan to retrieve and collect all of the pieces before dark today. After that we will try to reassemble the plane as much as possible so that the national accident investigation committee can establish the cause of the accident," the head of the army team, Yodchai Yingyod, told Reuters.

A team of experts from the Airbus Industrie's headquarters in Toulouse, southwestern France, have arrived to help the investigation. They declined to discuss the investigation.