The Associated Press
Monday, June 25, 2007
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: A chartered plane flying Monday between two popular tourist destinations in Cambodia has crashed, with at least 20 people on board feared killed, an aviation official said.
The plane, a Russian-made AN-24, was flying from Siem Reap — where the famous Angkor Wat temple complex is located — to Sihanoukville, a coastal city with access to beaches, said Him Sarun, Cabinet chief for the Secretariat of Civil Aviation.
An official at Siem Reap airport said 13 of the passengers were from South Korea, three were Czech, one was Russian and five were Cambodian. Their names were not available.
The official, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the press, said the plane carried a crew of five Cambodians.
The plane belonged to a small Cambodian airline called PMT Air, which began flying from Siem Reap to Sihanoukville in January.
The airport official said contact with the plane was lost at 10:50 a.m., five minutes before it was due to land. Him Sarun said the crash site had not yet been located by rescue teams.
Thanks TF,
It's news nobody wants to hear. Hopefully there may be survivors.
It is unfortunate when the advise/warnings about some of the local carriers becomes a reality.
We can only hope for the best.
It was a charter, not a commercial....
Rare for Dual props to crash, either pilot error or weather, the AN 24 is a sturdy craft...
http://www.bearcraft-online.com/museum/museum.htm?mid=7</a>
The An24 went out of production in 1978, so this makes this aircraft a MINIMUM of 29 years old.
Don't get me wrong, many aircraft flying today are that old if not older (including other turboprops, jets and basic single engine). I know, because I fly some a lot older.
But no matter how solid the aircraft was when it rolled off the production line, poor maintenance (just hypothesising) and cost cutting can make the safetest aircraft become a flying time bomb.
Combine this with possible weather issues or CRM (crew resource management) breakdown (such as in Yogkyokarta recently) and anything can happen.
Unfortunately, from what I have heard about this airline none of these factors can be ruled out.
It's the old swiss cheese analogy - it's not just one big hole, but the sum of many small holes (errors)
Safe flying for all.
It was a PMT Air flight -- aside from being one of the most unfortunately named airlines -- did operate as a commercial airline and had been running the route since the beginning of this year. UN staffers were banned from flying them some time in 2006 due to what they considered an unsafe flying record. Most would know them for the Phnom Penh to Ban Lung flight.
There are those that would be tasteless enough to make and inappropriate joke about that Air Line name.
Sadly inevitable, within the past 12 months the same carrier overshot the runway in Ratanakiri, and on another occasion had to return to Phnom Penh when an engine caught fire. Yet Cambodia's Civil Aviation Authority took no action...
#3 - PMT is a commercial air service based in Cambodia. That it was a charter flight doesn't change the fact that it was carrying paying customers. Many of the flights bringing in the Asian tour groups from Japan, Korea, etc to Siem Reap are so-called charters as the seats are sold exclusively to tour agencies for group travel, but it's a fuzzy definition... people paid for a flight. Doesn't matter if they bought the plane ticket themselves or the arrangements were made via a tour agency as part of a package tour.
#6 - People have been making jokes about this air service's name for years. No reason to stop now.
#7 - Took no action... Probably because they were more interested in getting the Sihanoukville airport open and PMT flying there.
Well looks like they arent going to make it . Finding bodies without wreckage sounds like a mid air explosion.
Korean English newspaper
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A small passenger plane carrying 22 people including 13 Koreans crashed into a jungle-clad mountain in southern Cambodia on Monday morning, the Foreign Ministry said. Oh Nak-young, councilor at the Korean Embassy in Phnom Penh said, ¡°We¡¯ve heard from local sources that four bodies of Korean passengers were found after a 10-hour search. We still stake our hope on the possibility that the rest of passengers survived somewhere since no explosion was reported.¡± The four bodies have not been identified because it was dark, Oh said.
Provincial Governor Thach Khorn said the jet took off from Siem Reap Airport at 9:52 a.m. bound for the southern resort of Sihanoukville but crashed in forested mountains in Kampot Province not far from the destination, 130 km southwest of the capital, at around 10:40. In Chiva, a provincial police chief was quoted as saying, "The area is heavily forested and the sky is dark (with rain) so it is hard for us to search. We have not found any pieces of the plane yet."
AP and Reuters quoted local officials as saying that workers on a nearby mountain reported seeing a plane crash in thick forest. Japan¡¯s Kyodo news agency quoted local residents as saying there were no survivors.
The plane carried 13 Koreans, three Czechs, one Russian and five Cambodian crew.
The Korean passengers included Cho Jong-ok, a 36-year-old KBS reporter, and his wife and two sons. The Korean passengers spent the weekend in Siem Reap, the gateway to the temples of Angkor Wat. They were to visit Sihanoukville on Monday and return to the northwestern town on Wednesday. They were scheduled to arrive at Incheon International Airport on Thursday morning.
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