Survivors tell of air crash fire horror in Thailand

Ninety people are known to have died as a result of the incident in Thailand on September 16 2007, eight of them British citizens.

The crash happened shortly after 3.40pm as the plane, a One-Two-Go Thai aircraft from Bangkok, came in to land in bad weather at Phuket International Airport.

Stephen Saunby and his partner Susan Howell – a Lincolnshire couple who were due to marry in Thailand – as well as boyfriend and girlfriend Alexander Collins and Bethan Jones, died in the crash. Married couples Helen and Neil Slater, from Scunthorpe, and Anthony and Judith Weston were also killed.

At an inquest into their deaths at Lincoln Coroner’s Court yesterday Ashley Harrow, who was on board the plane when it crashed but escaped with his life, described the moment of impact.

Speaking to a courtroom packed with family members, he said: “I woke up to a sort of heavy impact and then just a sort of vibration.

“It felt like, at that point, I knew something was wrong.”

Mr Harrow, from Moira, Northern Ireland, told coroner Stuart Fisher he was travelling on his own when he decided, on an impulse, to buy the air tickets to Phuket for a few days.

He was allocated a seat next to the emergency exit for the hour-long flight.

Cabin crew went through usual safety demonstrations before the aircraft took off, he said, but it was raining very heavily.

He fell asleep “almost immediately” and was not aware of any turbulence or problems until the moment of impact.

The plane came in to land and thudded heavily on to the runway twice, Mr Harrow said, before bursting into flames.

“I was thrown forward in my seat because of the impact,” he said. “Inside it was pretty dark and then as soon as I looked up to where the pilot was it was on fire.”

Mr Harrow and the passenger sitting next to him, Peter Hill, managed to open the emergency exit door and escape the aircraft by jumping on to its wing and down to the ground.

Once outside, the terrible weather conditions became even more apparent. Mr Harrow said: “There was really heavy wind and really heavy rain.

“You could not see the end of the runway or the terminal building.

“The first fire trucks were there in four or five minutes. They tried to apply foam from a canon but it was not reaching the plane because of the heavy wind.”

The inquest also heard details of post-mortem examinations carried out on each of the victims. Mr and Mrs Slater both died from multiple injuries.

The court heard how the sister of one of the American victims embarked on her own investigation into what went wrong and claimed the airline, One-Two-Go, had falsified the flight crew’s work schedules.

A statement from Bonnie Rind, from Massachusetts, was read in which she said she found the pilot and co-pilot “had both worked hours vastly in excess of legal limits”.

Her brother, Stefan Woronoff, died in the crash.

Ms Rind, 44, who has an engineering degree, described how her inquiry began after she happened to catch an Australian news report which claimed the airline had provided false work logs for the crew to the Thai investigators.

She also provided an internal company email for the coroner which, she said, provided proof the firm had deliberately falsified documents.

She said she believed the firm was “corrupt” and “operated with reckless disregard to passenger safety”.

She claimed the working hours of the pilots “directly contributed” to the crash.

Ms Rind said her online activities had provoked pilots and other staff members from the airline to come forward with details of mismanagement.

The inquest continues today.