THAILAND:Half of the systems to detect potentially dangerous wind shear were not working at the time of Sunday's aircraft crash at the Thai resort of Phuket which killed 89 people, including one Irishman, it emerged yesterday.
As relatives of the four Irish passport holders involved in the crash began to arrive in the country yesterday, officials confirmed that three out of six "low-level" wind shear alert systems were not working at the time of the crash.
Vuttichai Singhamanee, director of the flight standard bureau at the Thai Transport Ministry's aviation authority department confirmed that the lack of the systems could have made it difficult for the pilot, Arief Mulyadi, to judge whether it was safe to land.
Mr Mulyadi, who died in the crash, has been criticised by some Thai aviation officials for landing despite warnings from the flight tower about treacherous wind shear at the airport.
One official claimed that two other pilots had reported dramatic changes in wind speed and direction shortly before the One-Two-Go airlines flight crashed.
Investigators have said wind shear - a sudden change in either wind speed or direction in an aircraft's flight path that can destabilise a plane - was among the possible causes of the crash.
But Kajit Habnanonda, president of Orient-Thai Airlines, which owns One-Two-Go, described Mr Mulyadi as one the company's best pilots.
"The pilot who flew the doomed aircraft was one of our best. He was very experienced, patient and very decisive," Mr Habnanonda told the Bangkok Post newspaper.
"There was no way of knowing in advance what sort of obstacles lay ahead for any pilot."
Forty-one passengers survived the crash. There were reports that six critically injured patients - including two Irish - were to be airlifted to hospitals in Bangkok yesterday.
Aaron Toland, a former University of Ulster student from Derry, was one of four Irish citizens who were on board the One-Two-Go airlines flight from Bangkok when it crashed on Sunday afternoon. He died in the crash.
Mr Toland's friend, Christopher Cooley, also from Derry, remains in intensive care.
Two other Irish citizens - John O'Donnell, from Co Clare, and his friend, William Burke, from Co Tipperary - were also being treated for their injuries in hospital yesterday.
Another Northern Irish man, Ashley Scott Harrow (27), was travelling on a British passport. Speaking to Sky News from his hospital bed yesterday, he described how he and another passenger, Peter James Hill (35) from Manchester, had smashed open the door of the plane.
He said he woke up to see a fireball at the end of the plane.
"I could smell the fumes coming at us . . . after that, I maybe panicked a wee bit. I just grabbed the top handle and Peter was kicking the door," he said. "I just pulled it, that is when it half opened. After that, we were out."
In a rare positive development, Israeli officials agreed to work with their counterparts from Iran to help identify victims.
"In situations like this, you forget the divisions," said Yaki Oved, the head of Israeli police in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, who shook hands with SafdarShafiee of the Iranian embassy in Bangkok.
"The main thing is to help. You don't think about the politics."