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Wind shear investigated in jet crash

Buddhist monks chant next to the wreckage of One-Two-Go budget airline's MD-82 jet during a religious ceremony at Phuket airport yesterday. Investigators probing the Phuket jet crash are looking into whether human error was mostly to blame for Thailand's worst air disaster in a decade that killed 89 people media reported. PHOTO: AFP

Buddhist monks chanted prayers yesterday for the souls of the 89 people killed in a plane crash on the southern Thai resort island of Phuket while investigators continued to probe the role wind shear may have played in the accident.

A senior aviation official said that the Indonesian pilot of the doomed One-Two-Go Airlines flight OG269, Arief Mulyadi, had been warned of a treacherous wind shear at the airport, but decided to land anyway ahead of the accident on Sunday.

"The last word the pilot said was `landing,'" Chaisak Ungsuwan, director-general of the Air Transport Department, told reporters late on Monday, citing a transcript of the conversation between the control tower and the pilot.

Wind shear -- a sudden change in either wind speed or direction in an aircraft's flight path -- can destabilize a plane, as pilots compensate for the condition, which can then suddenly disappear and put the aircraft out of control.

While it is too early to definitively say what caused the crash, Kajit Habnanonda, president of Orient-Thai Airlines, which owns One-Two-Go, also singled out wind shear as a possible factor.

Transport Minister Theera Haocharoen cautioned, however, that the investigation was still ongoing.

"The officials have found the black boxes and will send them for analysis to the United States," he said, after the two flight data recorders were retrieved early on Monday. "Hopefully, we will learn in a few weeks the cause of the accident."

There were 123 passengers and seven crew members aboard the flight when it crashed on Sunday and caught fire while apparently trying to abort a landing at Phuket airport. The pilot and co-pilot were among the five crew members killed.

The 89 dead came from at least 10 countries, including the US, Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Sweden and Thailand. Officials said 68 bodies -- including all 36 Thai victims -- have been identified, with many of the bodies already collected by grieving friends and family.

Forty-one passengers survived the crash.

Early yesterday, monks, Muslim imams and a Catholic priest gathered near the twisted remains of the plane to honor the dead amid the roar of planes taking off. About a dozen monks -- dressed in orange robes -- chanted prayers near a pile of plane wreckage covered with netting. They then strung a white robe from the debris to a building where the bodies were being housed -- to help the souls find their way the next life.

No survivors nor relatives of the dead attended the 15 minute ceremony.

"In this case, many foreigners have passed away from this accident," said Peter Bancha, a Catholic priest living in Phuket. "We had to come and pray for their souls because this will save their souls."
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