A fairly new ATR-72 turboprop plane belonging to Lao Airlines crashed into the Mekong River during a violent storm in the southern city of Pakse, near the border with Thailand. Reports say none of the 44 passengers including six Australians and five crew members onboard the aircraft survived the crash. Customer feedback about the services of airline has generally been positive; however this crash had landed Lao Airlines in a major storm.

The plane was on a 467 km flight and was on its way from Lao's capital Vientiane to Pakse (near the border of Thailand and Cambodia) when it seems to have flown into the severe rainstorm associated with the tropical cyclone in the region.

The crash has brought the focus back on the safety reputation of Lao Airlines. Was it a tragedy waiting to happen?

Launched in 1976 as Lao Aviation the airline was rebranded in 2003 as Lao Airlines. For an airline of its stature, Lao Airlines seems to have been doing pretty well, considering the safety and reliability concerns about its performance strewn over the travel and trip advisory websites. Customers who have used the airlines services seem to have a good word about it.

With the news of the crash, however, the spotlight is back on the safety record and performance of Lao Airlines. It has now been revealed that Lao Airlines has never undergone a safety audit.

The failure of Lao Airlines to participate in an international safety audit earned it a "four out of seven star" rating from airlinerating.com.

"The major problem with the airline is that it has not taken part in an audit which is conducted by The International Air Transport Association (IATA), it's their operational and safety audit," Geoffrey Thomas, from airlineratings.com is reported to have told Melbourne radio station 3AW.

"To join IATA, which is the main body in aviation today, you have to actually pass this."

He says airlines that have passed the audit have a "4.3 times better safety record than airlines that have not".

"So it's a major audit of the airline's whole systems top to tail," Mr Thomas noted.

But if user comments on travel websites are to be believed, customers who have used the services of Lao Airlines seem to have, in general, a positive feedback about its flights, with some blaming safety concerns as mere propaganda.

The nationalities of passengers are also indicative of this confidence. Although, most of those killed are Lao nationals; the numbers of other foreign nationals who have lost their lives show that airline may not, after all, have had a bad reputation. Those dead include French, South Koreans, Canadians, Taiwanese, Chinese, Burmese, Vietnamese and Thais apart from the six Australians.

Bad weather has been blamed as the immediate cause of the crash. Customer perception however notwithstanding, this crash has landed Lao Airlines in a major storm of safety concerns, which will play out in the coming days.