Pilot Blamed for Thai Jet Crash
SURAT THANI, Thailand — Rescue workers continued to sift through a swamp for belongings of the passengers and crew of a Thai Airways jetliner that crashed Friday, while witnesses and some of the 45 survivors blamed the pilot for the plane’s fatal plunge.
“It was a mistake to try and land a third time,” said a sobbing Supakit Saejiew, whose friend Tawatchai Klaiwatanamath was one of 101 people killed in Friday’s crash.
Meanwhile, an airline official said equipment that helps guide planes to a safe landing in bad weather was removed during a runway expansion at the airport six months ago.
Without the airport’s instrument landing system, or ILS, the pilot would have had to land based only on what he could see of the runway, or possibly with some less precise radio navigation aids.
Flight TG261 slammed into a flooded rubber plantation during a heavy rainstorm Friday as it made a third attempt to land at the airport in Surat Thani. Two Americans died in the crash.
The plane’s black box, or flight recorder, has been recovered.
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