On the riverbank, a group of orange-robed Buddhist monks performed a prayer ceremony for the 30 victims whose bodies have been recovered and those still missing.
Lao Airlines flight QV301 crashed on Wednesday as it prepared to land in stormy weather at Pakse Airport in southern Laos. The plane then skidded into the Mekong River, the largest in Southeast Asia, and disappeared. All 49 people on board, more than half of whom were foreigners, are presumed dead.
By Saturday morning, 30 bodies had been found and authorities were still trying to identify several of them, Lao Airlines said in a brief statement that offered no update of the ongoing investigation. The ATR-72 aircraft was delivered in March, raising questions into why a virtually new plane crashed.
Until Saturday, the search for bodies and the plane’s flight data recorder had been stalled by lack of manpower and equipment in the poor Southeast Asian country, which lacks capabilities in disaster management.
France’s air accident investigation agency, the BEA, said it sent four investigators to help Laos with the probe. It said the team would work with technical advisers from ATR, the manufacturer of the aircraft.
Lao Airlines flight QV301 crashed on Wednesday as it prepared to land in stormy weather at Pakse Airport in southern Laos. The plane then skidded into the Mekong River, the largest in Southeast Asia, and disappeared. All 49 people on board, more than half of whom were foreigners, are presumed dead.
By Saturday morning, 30 bodies had been found and authorities were still trying to identify several of them, Lao Airlines said in a brief statement that offered no update of the ongoing investigation. The ATR-72 aircraft was delivered in March, raising questions into why a virtually new plane crashed.
Until Saturday, the search for bodies and the plane’s flight data recorder had been stalled by lack of manpower and equipment in the poor Southeast Asian country, which lacks capabilities in disaster management.
France’s air accident investigation agency, the BEA, said it sent four investigators to help Laos with the probe. It said the team would work with technical advisers from ATR, the manufacturer of the aircraft.