Tour escort told me balloon had drifted rather than crashed, widower tells Hong Kong inquest
Two hours later the man’s anxieties were confirmed when he found out his wife was among nine dead from city in Luxor disaster
A man who lost his wife and three in-laws in a hot air balloon tragedy in Egypt three years ago said a tour escort told him the balloon had merely drifted away when he anxiously inquired about their late return to the hotel.
The testimony of Wong Kong-sing, 71, came as the coroner’s court heard for the first time tour escort Wilson Au’s internal report submitted to Kuoni travel agency’s management.
The inquest before coroner June Cheung Tin-ngan followed the death of nine Hongkongers in Luxor on February 26, 2013, when the hot air balloon caught fire mid-air and plunged into a sugar cane field.
“I was very anxious,” he testified in a calm voice as he recalled waiting in the hotel lobby.
When the tour escort returned without his wife at 9am, Wong recalled: “[Au] told me that the hot air balloon had drifted some distance further away and that he would deal with the matter later on.”
Less than two hours later, Au returned from hospital with news of their deaths.
Au said in his internal report that he did not want to scare his tour members when the identities of the victims had yet to be ascertained.
“I did that out of good will,” the report read.
Au also revealed in his report that when arriving at the crash site he saw four dead foreigners and heard from Egyptians that “most of the passengers were on fire”.
Ten other passengers from various countries also died, bringing the total number killed to 19.
“At the time I was greatly shocked,” Au said. “I could not believe it to be true.”
He later identified a man and a woman in hospital to be his tour members from their clothes and build. “But because of the deformity of the faces, I was not able to be 100 per cent sure of their identities.”
Wong also recalled that insurance matters were not mentioned at the tea party held before the 10-day trip, which he said he joined only because his wife wanted to travel to Egypt with her brothers.
“Actually I don’t like to visit tombs. What I like is to go to Japan or Korea,” said Wong. “The reason why I went along is that on some occasions I had to go along with what my wife wanted to do.”
