BANGKOK, Sept. 16 — A low-fare airline carrying many foreign tourists crashed in heavy rain and broke into pieces on Thailand’s resort island of Phuket on Sunday, killing at least 83 of the 130 passengers and crew on board.
More bodies were expected to be retrieved from the smoldering wreckage of the plane, a McDonnell Douglas MD-82 that was Flight OG 269 of One-Two-GO, an airline based in Bangkok, officials said.
Worapot Rattasima, the deputy governor of Phuket, said at a news conference that some of the survivors were from Britain, Iran and Israel.
The exact cause of the crash remained unclear late Sunday, but witnesses said that the plane slid off the runway soon after touching down in heavy wind and rain.
“The plane looked like it was going to land,” Nong Khaonuan, a survivor of the crash, told the Thai television station Channel 9. “It felt like the wheels almost touched the ground, but we started going up again. Then we slid and hit the dirt embankment.”
After the crash, two people sitting one row in front of him opened the emergency exit and left the aircraft, Mr. Nong said. “My wife was unconscious — she fainted,” he said. “I dragged my wife out with me.”
The flight, which left Don Muang airport in Bangkok at 2:30 p.m. local time on Sunday, had two pilots and five other crew members on board, in addition to 123 passengers, 79 of them foreigners and 44 Thai.
Kongkiat Katepetch, a doctor at Krung Thep Hospital in Phuket, said he had admitted 29 injured passengers, including five in serious condition.
Eleven of the injured were identified as Thai; the injured also included eight British, two Austrian, two Iranian, two Irish one Italian, one German and one Dutch passenger. The nationalities of other injured passengers, some of whom were taken to other hospitals, were not given.
Chaowalert Jitjumnong, another survivor of the crash, said he had heard no explosion. “The plane slid and then crashed,” Mr. Chaowalert said on the Thai television channel TITV. “It was dark and there was a lot of smoke.”
Mr. Chaowalert said he had crawled toward the light. “I slid out onto the wing,” he said. “After I got out of the plane I saw fire.”
Established in 2000, One-Two-GO is one of many low-fare airlines in Southeast Asia that has made travel in the region more affordable. But a series of accidents involving these carriers has raised questions about their maintenance procedures and overall safety.
The MD-82 is a version of the MD-80, a plane made primarily in the 1980s by McDonnell Douglas. It is derived from the DC-9. The MD-80 and its successors went out of production in 1997, after Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas. While airlines can fly jets for decades, airlines in the United States that fly MD-80’s have gradually been replacing them with newer models.
But low-fare airlines overseas have bought these aircraft, particularly in Asia, where low-fare airlines have proliferated as Asian economies have grown.
The South Korean Ministry of Construction and Transportation issued a warning in March 2006 to the international arm of One-Two-GO, called Orient Thai, and to two other low-fare carriers because of “frequent delays and substandard safety measures,” The Korea Times reported.
The ministry said that Orient Thai, which operates flights from Inchon, South Korea, to Bangkok and Phuket, had not updated its safety and operational regulation manuals and that fire extinguishers and oxygen tanks were not in working condition.
“We ordered the carriers to improve the detected items,” The Korea Times quoted an official as saying.
In October 2004, a Boeing 747-200 operated by Orient Thai came within 660 feet of the Tokyo Tower while making its final approach to Haneda Airport, a Japanese newspaper, The Mainichi Shimbun, reported.
The newspaper quoted Orient Thai as saying the plane’s captain had failed to give proper instructions to his crew on landing procedures at Haneda.
In Phuket on Sunday, officials praised emergency workers for responding quickly to the crash. Rescue teams had carried out a drill on Sept. 6 involving a burning aircraft
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