An Australian woman who survived a Christmas Day plane crash in Burma says there was no warning and she feared she wouldn't make it out of the burning aircraft.
Public relations executive Anna Bartsch and partner Stuart Benson were among five Australians who made it off the Air Bagan Fokker 100 jet, after it crash landed near Heho airport in eastern Shan state.
Seventy of the 71 people on board survived, while one local tour guide was killed along with a motorcyclist on the ground.
Ms Bartsch, 31, from Adelaide, told Macquarie Radio on Thursday that she and Mr Benson, 32, felt "lucky beyond belief" that they survived.
"It's quite surreal. It's hard to really register that the whole series of events were anything other than a crazy movie that we watched," she said by phone from Burma. Ms Bartsch said there was no indication anything was wrong until the first impact then crashing, which she found out later was the plane ploughing through trees and having its wings torn off.
"The first was the bump and riding the bump and the skidding, that all happened so fast and without warning, but there wasn't really even time to feel scared.
"The fear really only came ... when we looked out the window as soon as we'd come to a halt and saw the flames through our window and realised how urgently we needed to get out.
"There were moments there ... where I thought I can't see us getting out, certainly not all of us, in time." Ms Bartsch said they were seated well down the aisle and were keen to get to the exit quickly because they feared the flames would ignite the fuel in the wing tanks.
"Little did I know that the wings weren't there anymore. We only realised that when we got outside."
Ms Bartsch said a lot of the crash landing was absorbed by the soft earth of the ploughed field.
She and her partner suffered only cuts and bruises, but lost their luggage in the crash.
