Vientiane Hard-landing

[rogerdee123]

I heard a rumor that a Lao Airline plane had a hard (crash?) landing at Vientiane on Saturday morning ... closing the airport for several hours.

Can any of you Lao residents confirm this? I'm booked on Lao Aviation this week !

[technocracy]

Not heard anything about it here. It'd normally get around if something like that happened.

However . . . saturday morning there was torrential rain and winds so it's not implausible.

[rogerdee123]

reason I asked was ....

My TG flight from Bkk > Vientiane (about noon) was cancelled Saturday. We were on the runway at Subarnabhumi about to take off and then the pilot announced that we were returning to the terminal for "technical" reasons. There was no reason given and Thai put me and all the other passengers on the late night TG flight.

When I arrived at Vientiane, I was surprised when a Taxi driver told me a Lao Aviation plane had crash landed on the runway and the airport had been closed to all flights that day .... presumably to allow the runway to be cleared.

However no one else here in Vientiane where I'm staying seems to know anything about it.

The taxi driver told me that one of the two engines failed. He said no one was hurt and the damage to the airplane was on the "outside". It sounded like a ground loop to me.

But there was another crash landing in Feb or March at Phonhom (that town near Nam Ngum dam) which was not reported in the newspapers until about a month later .... as the word and rumors spread I guess the Govt had to report it. This one was a single engine plane with only a few passengers. No one serious injured (according to the newspaper) in that one either. Actually I didn't know Lao Aviation had a single engine plane.

So I'm thinking maybe this incident won't be reported until the rumors start spreading ..... similar to the story re the Chinese getting the Tat Luang swamp. The Govt didn't acknowledge that until the rumors etc spread.

Not heard anything about it here. It'd normally get around if something like that happened.

However . . . saturday morning there was torrential rain and winds so it's not implausible.