One2Go OG269 eyewitness accounts
Dear All,
Having spent years travelling to Thailand and being married to a Thai I feel I have a fair insight into the culture and ways of life which on the whole work very well, although some I will never get my head around and have tried in vane for explanations to!
I was in Phuket last September and should have been on OG269 back from Bangkok having left on the early morning flight out to quickly collect some goods - my saving grace was a fellow Australian pilot who I happened to get talking to in a bar near to our home. Had he not insisted on beer after a beer I would statistically unlikely to be writing this right now. Back to the issue which angers me regarding this accident.
The day of the accident was the same as it had been for the previous 3 days before, torrential downpours of tropical monsoon behavior, the hour before and after were some of the heaviest in the 3 day storm. I had been to the airport to try and get a refund only 40 minutes before the crash and on the way out I drove to the road adjacent with the runway and parked up to watch a couple of flights come in. I was with a friend at the time who has no flying experience and I said to him that I was amazed the runway was open as the surface water was immense and coupled with the crosswind / gust factor was an accident waiting to happen - bordering on being able to surf on it (runway slopes quite a bit). In my professional view it was not fit for use. I am not convinced in the slightest that a microburst was to blame although I am aware the conditions were perfect. I believe that any slight deviation in wind strength and direction unfavorable would have caused the aircraft to aquaplane. 150m from the bank, im telling you now it is not and would give 50m at top from edge of runway. I have a video from my camera of the crash site on takeoff 2 days after if anyone wants to see it then ask me.
******* Thais do it there way regardless of the rules and cover things up with perfection as though nothing has ever happened. A nice little back hander always shuts the rest up!!********
Second point to consider in this incident was that within 12 hours they had removed the wreckage from the side of the runway completely and flights were arriving and departing again after 22hours, amazing given at the time 90 people had just lost their lives. What happened to the investigation? or was it that the story was already contrived and blamed the pilots for the crash, yes believe it, within a couple of hours the media had plastered the news all over Thai TV that the pilots were to blame (funny enough the majority of Thai TV is run by the military and those high up and the others will publish what they are told to). I gave an interview to Thai TITV after the crash at Bangkok Airport (Don Muang) and told them how things didn't add up, but it wasn’t showed in full and they only showed the bit that stated that I wasn't scared of flying in Thailand.
I am aware of the windshear alert systems at Phuket were down at the time of the crash which again leads me to believe that there is a cover up within. Two ways to look at this as far as I'm concerned, firstly if it was down, why oh why were flights coming in to land? Secondly could they be covering up the real wind strength and direction following their realisation that they had messed up by stating the system was down.
All I know is that I’m thankful to be alive and thanks to Chris the Australian and his rounds of beer I can tell u what I do know and that the pilots deserved more respect than what they were given.
Sorry if this is long winded but I am passionate about this incident and if I could do anything to force the Thai authorities to come forward I would but I'm only too aware that it would be a dangerous and a lost cause.