MUAN REGION: At least 167 people died when a Jeju Air plane landed on its belly and skidded off the runway and exploded in a fireball when it hit a wall at South Korea’s Muan International Airport on Sunday, the national fire agency said.
Jeju Air flight 7C2216, arriving from the Thai capital of Bangkok with 175 passengers and six crew on board, attempted to land shortly after 9:00 a.m. (0000 GMT) at the airport in the south of the country, South Korea’s transport ministry said.
Two people, both crew members, were rescued and officials suggested the rest were likely dead.
It is the deadliest plane crash on South Korean soil to date and the worst involving a South Korean airline in nearly three decades, according to ministry data.
The twin-engine Boeing 737-800 was seen on video broadcast by local media gliding down the runway with no apparent landing gear before crashing into a wall in an explosion of flames and debris. Other photos showed smoke and fire engulfing parts of the plane.
Two crew members, a man and a woman, were rescued from the burning tail section of the plane, Muan Fire Chief Lee Jung-hyun told a briefing. The fire was extinguished by 1 p.m., Lee said.
“Only the tail section retains some shape and the rest (of the plane) looks almost unrecognizable,” he said.
Authorities switched from rescue operations to rescue operations and were searching nearby areas for bodies that might have been thrown from the plane due to the force of the impact, Lee added.
Both crews were treated in hospitals for moderate to severe injuries, the head of the local health center said.
‘MY LAST WORDS’
Hours after the crash, family members gathered in the arrivals area of the airport, some crying and hugging as Red Cross volunteers handed out blankets.
Families screamed and cried loudly as the medic announced the names of the 22 victims identified by fingerprints.
Papers were sent out to families to write down their contact information.
One relative stepped up to the microphone and asked authorities for more information. “My older brother died and I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “I don’t know.”
Another asked journalists not to film. “We’re not monkeys in a zoo,” he said. “We are the bereaved families.
Mortuary vehicles lined up outside to take the bodies away, and authorities said a makeshift morgue had been set up.
The crash site reeked of jet fuel and blood, Reuters witnesses said, and workers in protective suits and masks combed the area while soldiers searched the underbrush.
Authorities were working to rescue people in the tail section, an airport official told Reuters shortly after the crash.
The accident is the worst by any South Korean airline since the Korean Air crash in Guam in 1997, which killed more than 200 people, according to figures from the transport ministry. The worst on South Korean soil was the Air China crash that killed 129 people.
Investigators are looking into bird strikes and weather conditions as possible factors, Lee said. Yonhap cited airport authorities as saying that the collision with the bird may have caused the landing gear to malfunction.
The control tower issued a bird strike warning and the pilots declared May shortly after, a transport ministry official said, without specifying whether the plane struck any birds.
Shortly after the call, the plane made an unsuccessful attempt to land, the official said.
The passenger texted a relative that the bird was stuck in the wing, News1 reported. This person’s last message was: “Shall I say my last words?”
Among the passengers were two Thai nationals and the rest are believed to be South Koreans, according to the transport ministry.
JEJU AIR SAYS BEREAVED ARE TOP PRIORITY
The Boeing 737-800 operated by Jeju Air was manufactured in 2009, the Ministry of Transport said.
Jeju Air CEO Kim E-bae apologized for the accident and bowed deeply during a televised briefing.
He said the cause of the crash was still unknown, that the plane had no accident record and there were no early signs of a malfunction. The airline will cooperate with investigators and support for the bereaved will be its top priority, Kim said.
No abnormal conditions were reported when the plane left Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, said Kerati Kijmanawat, president of Airports of Thailand.
It is the first fatal flight for Jeju Air, a low-cost airline founded in 2005 that ranks behind only Korean Air Lines ( 003490.KS ) and Asiana Airlines in terms of passenger numbers in South Korea.
The accident happened just three weeks after it launched regular flights from Muan to Bangkok and other Asian cities on December 8.
Muan International is one of South Korea’s smallest airports, but the number of international passengers rose nearly 20-fold from January to November this year to 310,702 from the same period in 2022, according to government data.
Boeing ( BA.N ), opening a new tab, said in an emailed statement: “We are in contact with Jeju Air regarding Flight 2216 and stand ready to support them. We extend our deepest condolences and thoughts to the families who have lost loved ones.” stay with the passengers and crew.”
The US Federal Aviation Administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
All domestic and international flights at Muan Airport have been canceled, Yonhap reported.
Acting South Korean President Choi Sang-mok, who was named the country’s interim leader in the ongoing political crisis on Friday, arrived at the scene and said the government was putting all its resources into dealing with the crash.
Two Thai women, aged 22 and 45, were on the plane, Thai government spokesman Jirayu Houngsub said, adding that details were still being verified.
In a post on X, Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra expressed condolences to the families of the dead and injured and said she had ordered the Foreign Ministry to provide assistance.
The ministry said in a statement that it was in contact with South Korean authorities.
