Qualla: Lao Airlines Flight 301

Lao Airlines Flight 301: Introduction

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mattun0211, CC0. The flight had already turned back once. Weather over Pakse International Airport was deteriorating fast on the afternoon of 16 October 2013, and the crew of Lao Airlines Flight 301 had executed a go-around on their first approach — a sensible, practiced response to poor visibility. They circled into the downwind leg and set up to try again. They never landed. The ATR 72-600 struck trees on the riverbank and plunged into the Mekong River less than six kilometres from the runway. All 49 people on board — 44 passengers and five crew — died. It was the deadliest accident in Lao aviation history, and the first fatal crash anywhere in the world involving the ATR 72-600 variant.

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Image: Mattun0211 | CC0

Lao Airlines Flight 301: Forty-Nine Lives, Eleven Nations

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tango7174, CC BY-SA 4.0. The passenger manifest read like a small cross-section of the region. Of the 44 people in the cabin, 16 were Lao nationals. Among the dead were at least two children from Australia. Crew from Laos and Cambodia sat in the cockpit: Captain Yong Som, a 57-year-old Cambodian pilot wi...

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Image: Tango7174 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lao Airlines Flight 301: Flight Context

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. The crash site lies in the Mekong River at approximately 15.15°N, 105.73°E, roughly 6 km southeast of Pakse International Airport (ICAO: VLPS). From the air at 3,000–5,000 feet, the wide brown curve of the Mekong is the dominant feature — the river here splits around low sandbars before flowing south toward Cambodia. The airport's single runway is visible just north of the city. Recommended viewing altitude: 3,000–4,000 feet for river detail. Nearby airports: VLPS (Pakse, ~6 km), VLVT (Vientiane/Wattay, ~640 km north).

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Image: Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk) | Public domain

Lao Airlines Flight 301: The River That Held Its Secrets

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Blue Stahli Luân, CC BY 2.0. The Mekong near Pakse runs wide, swift, and deep — qualities that give the river its grandeur and made the search for victims a prolonged ordeal. Rescue teams faced a river that does not readily yield what it takes. The current carried wreckage and the people inside it far downst...

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Image: Blue Stahli Luân | CC BY 2.0

Lao Airlines Flight 301: A Marker in Lao Aviation History

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hector Garcia, CC BY-SA 2.0. Laos is a mountainous, landlocked country where short domestic flights connect cities that would otherwise require long overland journeys. The Vientiane–Pakse route, about 650 kilometres as the crow flies, is one of the country's most travelled air corridors. Flight 301 was a rou...

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Image: Hector Garcia | CC BY-SA 2.0