Third luckiest on crashed flight

Press, 8 May 1980, Page 28

Third luckiest on crashed flight

NZPA Hong Kong A Bangkok air crash victim, Bruce Gillespie, an engineer, of Auckland, rates himself the third most lucky passenger on board the Thai domestic flight that crashed near Bangkok Airport about two weeks ago. Forty of the 52 people on the Hawker-Siddeley 748 flight died on impact but two passengers walked away, and Mr Gillespie was pulled clear about 30 minutes later but with both legs broken. In a telephone interview from his hospital bed at the British Nursing Home in Bangkok he said, “I reckon I was the third luckiest bloke on the flight.” Mr Gillespie said specialists were happy with the way the compound fractures in his legs had been set. They planned to insert steel pins in both legs in. operations on alternate legs. ” “I won’t be playing rugby again but I certainly plan to get out on the golf course,” he said; He previously played rugby for the Ponsonby Club in Auckland. Mr Gillespie said he had been offered a ride in a friend’s car from the Thai provincial centre of Khon Khen to Bangkok but had declined; “I had some work to do and toid my mate that I would catch the afternoon plane.” The plane encountered a heavy rainstorm as it approached Bangkok. “There was a lot of lighning and turbulence,” he said. “It was a bit similar to an proach into Wellington. “Then all of a sudden we seemed to hit a posi-

tive air pocket. The plane rose up a remarkable distance. I looked at mv neighbour and we checked our seat belts; At the top of its rise the plane checked and began to fall. There was a lot of lightning at the same time. “It seemed to go down for an eternity. “I can’t remember the physical feeling of hitting the ground. But when I woke up — I seemed to have been unconscious for a while — I was in a small section of the plane with a guy across my pelvis and my legs were trapped under seats. I had just about cut my tongue right off and I had lost a lot of teeth. “I tried to lift the man off my pelvis but he was dying and I could not move him. I had to wait until somebody came. I remember thinking that if the plane caught fire there was no way I could get out. “Some people came from a nearby village about half an hour later; The first bloke in the plane went straight to a dead man in front of me and took a couple of gold necklaces. 1 thought he was getting a nice present. “The plane’s seats did not stay in place; They

were all jumbled about : Eventually a lot of other people came and pulled me out. I had not been feeling any pain in my legs but I nearly fainted :■ when they carried me out; • It was raining the whole time. “Somebody tried to grab the watch off my wrist as I was carried out but I managed to grab it back. But basically everything i on the plane was stolen.-11 have lost my briefcase and passport and everything else. I don’t blame the Thais because they are ' very poor but you would think there would be some police about somewhere.” Mr Gillespie was working at the New Zealand hospital construction aid project in Khon Khen. He i said he was getting first- j class treatment from hos- ’■ pital and nursing staff in Bangkok. i “The specialists have ! been to see me and the only man I have yet to , catch' up with is a den- 1 tist.” 1 He said a Thai nurss had told him that a pre- i liminary inquiry into the cause of the crash had suggested two factors — that the plane was overloaded by five people and that it had been caught in a freak tornado;