Vietnam Jet Carrying 66 Crashes; Boy Survives

An aging Vietnam Airlines jet carrying 66 people crashed and burned Wednesday while trying to land at Cambodia’s Phnom Penh airport, apparently killing everyone but a 1-year-old child.

The victims included 21 South Koreans, six of them doctors and students carrying medical supplies to Cambodia, 22 Taiwanese and one Japanese, said Cambodian aviation officials. There were no Americans aboard, they said.

There were reports that one other person may have survived, but they could not be confirmed.

The cause of the crash is under investigation.

Officials identified the survivor as a Thai boy, Chanayuth Nim-Anong, who was hospitalized with a broken leg. His mother, a Chinese nurse, was among those killed. The boy’s father, Niphon Nim-Anong, 40, had been waiting at Phnom Penh’s Pochentong airport for the flight, which had left Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, 35 minutes earlier.

“There were so many people [at the crash site], and I saw someone carrying my boy,” he told reporters. “I saw my son, and I brought him to the hospital.”

Witnesses said the twin-engine, Soviet-built Tupolev Tu-134, designed in the 1960s but still in wide use throughout the former Soviet Bloc, skidded through rice paddies half a mile south of the runway and exploded. Only the tail section and a portion of the fuselage remained intact.

“When the plane approached the airport and tried to land, there was pouring rain and strong wind,” said Le Duc Tu, general director of the state-owned Vietnam Airlines. “This was unexpected because when the plane took off from Tan Son Nhut airport, we received reports that showed not-so-bad weather.”

Crowds immediately converged on the fiery site and began looting bodies and luggage in search of valuables. They were chased away by police.

Aviation officials noted that Pochentong airport was looted in July by soldiers loyal to Cambodian coup leader Hun Sen. The control tower had been stripped of radar and other equipment. But the equipment had been quickly replaced, and Vietnam Airlines had been one of the first carriers to resume service to Cambodia.

At the airport Wednesday, bodies lay under white sheets at the airport. Hun Sen went to Calmette hospital, where several injured passengers were taken and later died.

“This is a big tragedy, an accident,” he said. He attributed the crash to bad weather and ruled out the possibility of terrorism. Cambodia has been shaken by violence since July, when Hun Sen overthrew the co-prime minister, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, with whom he shared power.

The crash came just as Vietnam Airlines was increasing its international advertising in an effort to capture a larger share of the booming Asian aviation market. The airline has been modernizing its fleet and replacing some of its old Soviet-made planes with Boeings and Airbuses.

The sight of Soviet-built passenger planes with flaking paint is still common at airports in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. The aircraft are used mainly on domestic routes and the hop to Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital.

With Vietnam’s move toward a more market-oriented economy in recent years, the airline began a campaign to be competitive with other regional carriers, and service, safety and maintenance improved dramatically.

Tu, the airline official, denied that safety was a factor in the crash. “This aircraft was maintained on a regular basis,” he told the English-language Saigon Times newspaper.