About 44 people dead in Bangkok plane crash

BANGKOK (AFP) – A Lao Airlines plane
carrying 44 people, including French
and Thai citizens, from the capital
Vientiane to the southern town of Pakse
crashed killing all on board on
Wednesday, officials said.
At least 7 French citizens and 5
Thais were among those killed when the
plane carrying 39 passengers and five
crew went down around eight
kilometres (five miles) from the airport
in Champasak province in southern
Laos, officials said.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius
said he had learned of the deaths with
"deep shock and great sadness" and
that France was rushing embassy
officials to the site of the crash.
Pakse is a hub for tourists travelling to
more remote areas in southern Laos.
"I can now confirm, according to our
reports, that all 44 people on board
have died, including five Thai," Thai
foreign ministry spokesman Sek
Wannamethee told AFP.
Pictures on Thai television showed a
small plane, half submerged in the
river, with what appeared to be bodies
lying on the banks.
An official at the South Korean embassy
in Bangkok told Yonhap news agency
that three South Koreans were also
among the dead.
State-owned Lao Airlines confirmed the
crash in a statement on its official
Facebook page, in which it expressed
"our condolences to family, friends,
colleagues and relatives" of the
passengers.
It said the aircraft hit "extreme" bad
weather and had crashed into the
Mekong River.
"There were no news of survivors at this
time," it said, but did not confirm the
number of deaths.
"Lao Airlines is taking all necessary
steps to coordinate and dispatch all
rescue units to the accident site in the
hope of finding survivors and at the
same time informing relative of the
passengers," the English language
statement said.
The QV301 flight set off from Vientiane
on time at 2.45pm (0745 GMT) and was
supposed to arrive in Paske just over an
hour later, but crashed as it prepared to
land.
A spokesman from aircraft
manufacturer ATR in France confirmed
the crash and told AFP that the state-
owned Lao Airlines flight was one of its
twin-engine turboprop ATR-72 planes.
He said Lao Airlines has a fleet of six
ATR-72 planes.
An official at the Vietnamese Embassy
in Laos told AFP on condition of
anonymity that all on board the plane
had been killed.
Founded in 1976, the carrier operates a
fleet of ATR-72 turboprop, Airbus A320
and Chinese-made MA60 planes,
serving domestic airports and
destinations in China, Thailand,
Cambodia and Vietnam, according to its
website.
It has a chequered safety record.
The country has had 29 fatal air
accidents since the 1950s, according to
the Aviation Safety Network, whose
data showed that the country's safety
record has improved dramatically in the
last decade.
The last fatal air accident was in
October 2000 when about eight people died
when a plane operated by the airline —
then called Lao Aviation — crashed in
remote mountains in the northeast of
the country.
Communist Laos, landlocked between
Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar
and China, is a closed country with a
secretive one-party government.
The nation of about seven million
people is one of Asia's poorest countries
and is highly dependent on foreign
donors.
The economy is relatively insulated
from global trade and financial
networks, though Laos has become a
popular tourism destination and mining
has played an increasingly important
role in development.