Hanoi plane ‘was lost’

Press, 13 February 1982, Page 8

Hanoi plane ‘was lost’

NZPA-Reuter Bangkok The survivors of a Vietnamese Air Force transport which crash-landed in Thailand on Thursday said they had lost their way while flying through bad weather, a senior Thai military official said today.

A crew member was fatally injured when the twin engine propeller-driven Antonov 26 with 13 people on board ploughed into a tapioca field about 38km from the Kampuchean border. General Arthit KamlangEk, assistant Army Comman-der-in-Chief responsible for security along the Kampuchean frontier, said yesterday there appeared to be

nothing sinister about the plane’s intrusion into Thailand’s airspace and the crash.

Quoting the survivors he said the plane’s navigational equipment had broken down and the aircraft had crossed the frontier by mistake. They had been flying through dense cloud.

The Soviet-built plane was carrying a crew of five and eight soldier passengers. It had flown from Ho Chi Minh City in South Vietnam to Phnom Penh, and was meant to be flying back to Vietnam.

Vietnan has about 200,000 troops in Kampuchea supporting the Government in Phnom Penh which came to power after Hanoi invaded the country in December 1978, and toppled the Chin-ese-backed Khmer Rouge regime.

Royal Thai Air Force jets were sent up to intercept crossed the plane after it the border.