In general, those of us from western countries travel only to vacation destinations where we believe we are safe. The tourists on that airplane weren't doing chopper training or eminently planning to climb Everest. They were traveling to an exotic, supposedly tourist-friendly, beach destination to sit in the sun and enjoy the unspoiled beauty.
Those tourists died because One-Two-Go/Orient Thai is a bait and switch operation. Based on the advertisements and cover of the government, those passengers believed they were getting on a safe airline, even though they were not.
There was no public information to suggest otherwise. If that information had been available, most of those tourists would have chosen a different airline or a different beautiful beach - possibly in a different country.