All but two of the 181 people on board a passenger plane were killed when it skidded off a runway at a South Korean airport, slammed into a concrete fence and burst into flames after its landing gear apparently failed to deploy, officials said.
The National Fire Agency said rescuers raced to pull people from the Jeju Air passenger jet at the airport in the southern city of Muan, about 290km (180 miles) south of Seoul.
The transport ministry said the craft was a 15-year-old Boeing 737-800 jet that was returning from Bangkok, and that the crash happened at 9.03am local time.
A total of 179 people – 85 women, 84 men and 10 others whose genders were not immediately identifiable – died, the fire agency said.
Emergency workers pulled two people, both crew members, to safety.
There were 175 passengers and six crew on the flight. There were no Irish nationals on board, the Irish Embassy in South Korea confirmed.
One of the two survivors is a 33-year-old known as Lee, who was working as a flight attendant. “When I woke up, I had already been rescued,” he told doctors at the Ewha Womans University Seoul Hospital in the capital city, according to its director. Lee is currently in intensive care after doctors diagnosed him with multiple fractures and risk of paralysis.
The fire agency deployed 32 fire trucks and several helicopters to contain the blaze. About 1,560 firefighters, police officers, soldiers and other officials were also sent to the site, it said.
Footage of the crash aired by YTN television showed the Jeju Air jet skidding across the surface, apparently with its landing gear still closed, and crashing head-on into a concrete wall on the outskirts of the facility.
Other local TV stations aired footage showing thick plumes of black smoke billowing from the craft, which was engulfed in flames.
Lee Jeong-hyeon, chief of the Muan fire station, told a televised briefing that the jet was destroyed, with only the tail assembly remaining recognisably intact among the wreckage.
He said various possibilities for the cause of the crash are being investigated, including whether the aircraft was struck by birds.
Transport ministry officials later said their early assessment of communication records show the airport control tower issued a bird strike warning to the plane shortly before it intended to land and gave its pilot permission to land in a different area.
The pilot sent out a distress signal shortly before the plane went past the runway and skidded across a buffer zone before hitting the wall, the officials said.
Senior transport ministry official Joo Jong-wan said workers have retrieved the plane’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders, which will be examined by government experts, and that the runway at Muan airport will be closed until January 1st.
Emergency officials in Muan said the plane’s landing gear appeared to have malfunctioned.
Kerati Kijmanawat, director of the Airports of Thailand, confirmed in a statement that Jeju Air flight 7C 2216 had taken off from Suvarnabhumi Airport with no reports of abnormal conditions with the aircraft or on the runway.
Jeju Air issued a statement expressing its “deep apology” over the crash and said it will do its “utmost to manage the aftermath of the accident”.
In a televised news conference, the airline’s chief executive, Kim E-bae, gave a deep bow with other senior company officials as he apologised to bereaved families and said he feels “full responsibility” for the incident.
He said the company had not identified any mechanical problems with the aircraft following regular checks and that he would wait for the results of government investigations into the cause of the incident.
Boeing said in a statement on X that it is in contact with Jeju Air and ready to support the company in dealing with the crash.
“We extend our deepest condolences to the families who lost loved ones, and our thoughts remain with the passengers and crew,” it said.
The apparent absence of landing gear, the timing of the twin-engine Boeing 737-800′s belly-landing at Muan International Airport and the reports of a possible bird strike all raised questions that could not yet be answered.
Under global aviation rules, South Korea will lead a civil investigation into the crash and automatically involve the National Transportation Safety Board in the United States, where the plane was designed and built.
It is one of the deadliest disasters in South Korea’s aviation history. The last time South Korea suffered a large-scale air disaster was in 1997, when a Korean Air plane crashed in Guam, killing 228 people on board.
The incident came as South Korea is embroiled into a huge political crisis triggered by president Yoon Suk Yeol’s stunning imposition of martial law and ensuing impeachment.
Last Friday, South Korean politicians impeached acting president Han Duck-soo and suspended his duties, leading deputy prime minister Choi Sang-mok to take over.
Mr Choi ordered officials to employ all available resources to rescue the passengers and crew at the crash site before he headed to Muan. He declared a period of national mourning until January 4th.
Mr Yoon’s office said his chief secretary, Chung Jin-suk, will preside over an emergency meeting between senior presidential staff later on Sunday to discuss the crash.
Wails and screams had erupted throughout Muan International Airport as hundreds of grandparents, parents and children endured an agonising wait for news of their loved ones.
A young woman comforted an older woman weeping about her son. A young man wiped tears off his face. Two crying women hugged each other.
Jang Gu-ho (68), sat stoically in the arrivals hall beside his teary-eyed wife after rushing to the airport from his home in the nearby city of Mokpo. He said five of his relatives had been on the plane returning from a vacation: his wife’s sister, her daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren. “We’re thunderstruck,” he said. His wife was too overcome with emotion to speak.
In a restricted area of the airport, officials worked to identify bodies recovered from the crash. In the arrivals hall, fire, police and transport officials periodically announced updates on their progress.
The first 22 names were all Korean nationals who had been identified by their fingerprints, according to the lists. They included a 23-year-old flight attendant and a 78-year-old male passenger. Officials later said they had identified 88 of the bodies.
In the departures hall, temporary tents were set up on Sunday evening for families of the plane’s passengers and crew. Outside the airport, cars lined up to enter packed parking lots. Some parked on the shoulders of the roads leading to the terminal, and people continued to stream into the airport through the evening.
Mr Jang and his wife had been at the airport since about half past noon after getting a call from a nearby town hall’s office saying it had been notified of a passenger on the plane who was related to him.
Six hours after the couple dashed to the airport, there were still no answers. “I’m expecting it to be a long night,” Mr Jang said.
On Wednesday, December 25th, an aircraft en route from Baku, Azerbaijan, to the Chechen capital, Grozny, crash-landed in Kazakhstan after diverting from southern Russia, where Ukrainian drones had been attacking several cities. At least 38 people were killed.
On Saturday, Russian president Vladimir Putin apologised to Azerbaijan’s leader for what the Kremlin called a “tragic incident” over Russia in which the Azerbaijan Airlines plane crashed after Russian air defences were fired against the Ukrainian drones. – Agencies/New York Times
