Thai Tourist Plane Crashes, Killing 37
lane carrying tourists to a southern resort island crashed today during heavy rains, and police said all 37 aboard were killed.
The Bangkok Airways turboprop crashed into a coconut grove as it was approaching the airport on Koh Samui, said Prateep Pakdeepol of the island’s police station.
Prateep said there were 33 passengers, including an infant, and that almost all were foreign tourists. There were four crew members on the flight from Bangkok.
The passengers included 29 foreigners, said Hiroshi Enomata, first secretary of the Japanese Embassy in Bangkok. Among them were five Japanese, he said.
No information on other foreign nationals was immediately available.
The 50-minute flights from Bangkok usually are packed with foreign tourists heading for the beaches of the island in the Gulf of Thailand, about 300 miles south of Bangkok.
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