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NEWS - Myanmar, Thailand Widen Sear



Myanmar, Thailand Widen Search for Missing Plane

            Reuters
            25-AUG-98

            BANGKOK, Aug 25 (Reuters)- Authorities in Thailand and
Myanmar
            on Tuesday widened their search for a missing Myanmar
Airways
            aircraft with 39 people on board, aviation officials said. 

            Myanmar authorities who believe the missing Fokker F-27
turboprop
            aircraft went down in Thailand have asked officials there to
hunt for it,
            an airline official said. 

            The aircraft was on a regular two-hour domestic flight from
Yangon to
            the eastern border town of Tachilek, where it was due to
have landed
            at 0200 GMT on Monday. 

            ``The Myanmar government believes it is somewhere in
Thailand, but
            nobody knows exactly where,'' an official of Myanmar Airways
            International in Bangkok said. 

            Most of the passengers were Myanmar military personnel, a
Myanmar
            Airways official in Yangon told Reuters by telephone. 

            The search had proved unsucessful, he said. ``We have no
news,'' he
            added. 

            Yangon's Ministry of Information has said the plane, flight
UB635, tried
            to land at Tachilek but had been unable to do so due to poor
weather.
            So it had flown on to Heho in southeast Myanmar but had lost
contact
            with ground control. 

            A control tower official at Bangkok's international airport
said radar
            operators at northern airports in Thailand had not detected
the plane
            and had received no emergency calls for help. 

            In January, at least seven people were killed when a Myanmar
Airways
            F-27 carrying about 40 people on a domestic flight crashed
near
            Thandwe, about 320 km (200 miles) northwest of Yangon. 

            A Myanmar Transport Ministry official said on Monday most
            passengers on the missing aircraft were Myanmar citizens. 

            An airline official said the F-27 normally had a four-member
crew.