Thanks for that; horrible to read. We have friends in Phuket (both resident and on holiday). We had not received any news from anyone else, but still horrible looking down a list to see if anyone is on it that you know.

Reading between the lines, the intimation seems to be these budget airlines use fuel hungry older planes and may not put enough fuel on board in order to be able to divert to another airport. As this flight had aborted it seems once and came in to try again, I wonder if this is the case, if they had to land because they did not have enough fuel to do anything else.

A little while ago Malaysia Airlines nearly lost their certificate to fly into British airspace as they reckoned the planes were coming into Heathrow on fumes. Hopefully the truth will come out of this.

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