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Student's body brought home to Derry

Aaron Toland - Died in Thai air crash
Aaron Toland - Died in Thai air crash

The body of student Aaron Toland, who was killed in the air crash on the island of Phuket at the weekend, has arrived back in Ireland.

Mr Toland's remains were flown into Dublin Airport before being removed to Derry for burial.

Mr Toland's father Myles accompanied his remains to Dublin Airport and a hearse carrying the coffin was given a Garda escort towards the border.

The 22-year-old and his friend, Chris Cooley, were on their way from Bangkok to Australia when the plane they were travelling in crashed.

Mr Cooley remains in hospital on the island.

89 people were killed when the One-Two-Go plane crashed in bad weather. 55 of those are understood to have been foreigners.

Both pilots were killed in the accident. 41 people survived.

Aviation officials are still trying to determine what caused the disaster, and investigators say they will send the crucial flight data recorders to the United States for analysis.

It also emerged that the McDonnell Douglas MD-82 plane was 24 years old, twice as old as previously stated by Thai transport ministry officials.

So far, aviation officials have said that the Indonesian pilot was warned of a dangerous weather condition known as wind shear as he came in to land, but that he decided to land anyway.

It appears that he changed his mind at the last moment and tried to pull up, but was caught in the wind shear and crashed on the runway.

Three of six systems designed to detect wind shear were not working at the airport when the passenger jet crashed.

Forensic investigators have been under increasing pressure to speed up the process of identifying 33 remaining victims of the plane crash.

Citizens from Ireland Thailand, France, Iran, Britain, Israel, the US, Germany, Canada, Sweden, Australia and Indonesia were among the dead.

Click here to read about a Meath man who helped care for some of the Irish survivors of the Phuket plane crash