A budget airline flight with 130 people aboard crashed on landing at Phuket airport in heavy rains and strong winds yesterday, killing 88 people and injuring 42.

The One-Two-Go Airlines plane was carrying 123 passengers, two pilots and five attendants from Bangkok. It landed in heavy rain and veered off the runway, hitting an earth embankment, breaking into two and bursting into flames.

The 12-year-old McDonnell Douglas MD-82 plane that served flight OG/OX269 left Don Mueang airport at 2:30PM before crash-landing on arrival at 3:40PM.

Only 44 passengers were Thai. The other 79 passengers were foreigners.

Witnesses said the plane seemed to abort its first landing attempt. However, it skidded when it touched the runway, before hitting the embankment.

Wreckage was strewn over a large area. Rescuers battled smoke and intense heat to remove bodies of the dead and evacuate the injured.

A pilot informed the control tower that he would abort the first landing attempt because he could not see the runway.

According to witnesses, a fire broke out on the right wing while the plane was slipping from the runway. The fire went out, but then re-ignited until flames covered most of the aircraft.

Many of the dead perished in their seats and were found with their seatbelts fastened. Other passengers, mainly from the rear of the aircraft, jumped from windows or squeezed through jagged openings in the fuselage.

Some made it out through the plane's emergency exits.

The plane had flown in from Bangkok in mid-afternoon in heavy rain and low visibility.

''The pilot asked to go around,'' said Chaisak Angsuwan, director-general of the Aviation Department. ''The control tower allowed it, but the aircraft fell to the runway and the body broke.''

Rescue workers had put out the blaze by 5:20PM, then kept evacuating survivors and removing bodies. The airport was closed and about 20 flights were cancelled immediately.

Dr Tinakorn Pongwiwat, adviser of the Narenthorn rescue center in Phuket, said injured passengers were admitted to Thalang Hospital, Bangkok Hospital Phuket, Vachira Phuket Hospital and Siriroj Hospital.

veer to change directly suddenly embankment - a slope made of earth or stone that rises up from the side of a road or, in this case, a runway injuring causing physical harm (flight) attendants people whose job it is to serve and take care of passengers on an airplane witnesses people who see something happen abort to end or cause something to end before it is completed, in this case, the landing of an aircraft skid to slide sideways or forward in an uncontrolled way

wreckage the parts of a vehicle, building, etc. that remain after it has been badly damaged or destroyed strewn spread or lying over a surface; scattered intense very strong; very great evacuate to move people from a place of danger to a safer place control tower a building at an airport from which the movements of airplanes are controlled re-ignited (of a fire) started again flames the hot bright stream of burning gas that comes from something that is on fire

perished died, especially in a sudden, violent way fastened closed firmly rear back jagged with rough, pointed and often sharp edges fuselage the main part of an aircraft in which passengers and goods are carried visibility how far or how well you can see, especially as affected by the light or the weather blaze a very large and often dangerous fire