South Korea’s acting president Choi Sang-mok on Monday ordered an emergency safety inspection of the country’s entire airline operations as investigators worked to identify victims and find out what caused the deadliest air disaster on South Korean soil.
All 175 passengers and four of the six crew were killed when a Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 belly-landed and skidded off the end of the runway at Muan International Airport, erupting in a fireball as it slammed into a wall. Two crew members were pulled out alive.
The top priority for now is identifying the victims, supporting their families and treating the two survivors, Mr Choi told a disaster management meeting in Seoul.
“Even before the final results are out, we ask that officials transparently disclose the accident investigation process and promptly inform the bereaved families,” he said.
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“As soon as the accident recovery is conducted, the transport ministry is requested to conduct an emergency safety inspection of the entire aircraft operation system to prevent recurrence of aircraft accidents.”
As a first step, the transport ministry announced plans to conduct a special inspection of all 101 Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by South Korean airliners beginning on Monday, focusing on the maintenance record of key components.
Jeju Air flight 7C2216, arriving from the Thai capital Bangkok, was trying to land shortly after 9am (midnight Irish time) on Sunday at the airport in the south of the country.
Investigators are examining bird strikes, whether any of the aircraft’s control systems were disabled, and the apparent rush by the pilots to attempt a landing soon after declaring an emergency as possible factors in the crash, fire and transportation officials have said.
Experts say many questions remain, including why the plane, powered by two CFM 56-7B26 engines, appeared to be travelling so fast and why its landing gear did not appear to be down when it skidded down the runway into a concrete embankment.
CFM International is a joint venture between GE Aerospace and France’s Safran.
On Monday, transport ministry officials said as the pilots made a scheduled approach they told air traffic control the aircraft had suffered a bird strike, shortly after the control tower gave them a warning that birds were spotted in the vicinity.
The pilots then issued a Mayday warning and signalled their intention to abandon the attempt at landing and to go around and try again. Shortly afterwards, the aircraft came down on the runway in a belly landing, touching down about 1,200m along the 2,800m runway and sliding into the embankment at the end of the runway.
Officials are investigating what role the localiser antenna, located at the end of the runway to help with landings, played in the crash, including the concrete embankment on which it was standing, transport ministry officials told a media briefing.
“Normally, on an airport with a runway at the end, you don’t have a wall,” said Christian Beckert, a flight safety expert and Lufthansa pilot based in Munich. “You more have maybe an engineered material arresting system, which lets the aeroplane sink into the ground a little bit and brakes [it].”
The crash killed mostly local residents who were returning from holidays in Thailand, while two Thai nationals also died.
“I can only accept it, make peace with it,” said Boonchuay Duangmanee (77), the father of one of the Thai victims. “When I think about it, I remind myself that it was an accident. It’s something that can happen to anyone. So, I’ve come to terms with it because no matter what I do, my daughter won’t come back.”
On Monday morning, investigators were still trying to identify some of the more than two dozen remaining unidentified victims, as anguished families waited inside the Muan airport terminal.
Park Han-shin, who lost his brother in the crash, said he was told by authorities that his brother’s remains had been identified, but he had not been able to see the body.
Mr Park called on victims’ families to unite in responding to the disaster, citing the example of the notorious Sewol ferry sinking in 2014 that killed more than 300 people, mostly schoolchildren. Many relatives of the victims of the Sewol disaster complained it took authorities too long to identify those killed and the cause of that incident.
Transportation ministry officials said the Jeju Air jet’s flight data recorder has been recovered but appeared to have sustained some damage to its exterior, and it was not yet clear whether the data was sufficiently intact to be analysed. – Reuters