- Jeju Air flight 7C2216 was carrying 175 passengers and six crew members.
- The aircraft’s landing gear may have failed due to a bird strike.
- Two people rescued alive, relief operations underway: firefighters.
SEOUL: At least 96 people were killed when a plane skidded off the runway and burst into a fireball as it crashed into 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, Bangkok, with 181 people on board, was attempting to land shortly after 9 a.m. at the airport in the south of the country, according to the South Korean Ministry of Transportation. .
The ministry also confirmed the victims of the deadliest plane crash suffered by a South Korean airline in almost three decades.
Two crew members, a man and a woman, were rescued from the tail section of the burning plane, Muan fire chief Lee Jung-hyun said at a briefing. The fire was extinguished at 1:00 p.m., Lee said.
“Only the tail part retains a little shape, and the rest [the plane] “It seems almost impossible to recognize,” he added.
Authorities have moved from rescue to recovery operations and, because of the force of the impact, are searching nearby areas for bodies possibly thrown from the plane, Lee added.
The two crew members were being treated in hospitals with medium to severe injuries, the director of the local public health center said.
Yonhap The news agency quoted a fire official as saying that most of the 175 passengers and six crew members were presumed dead.
At least 58 bodies have been recovered, but that number is not final, another fire official said. Reuters.
Authorities had worked to rescue people in the queue section, an airport official said. Reuters shortly after the accident.
Video shared by local media showed the twin-engine plane skidding down the runway with no apparent landing gear before crashing into a wall in an explosion of flames and debris. Other photographs showed smoke and fire engulfing parts of the plane.
‘Last words’
The accident is the worst suffered by any South Korean airline since the Korean Air crash in Guam in 1997, which killed more than 200 people, according to data from the Ministry of Transportation.
Investigators are looking into bird strikes and weather conditions as possible factors, Lee said. Yonhap cited airport authorities as saying that a bird strike could have caused the landing gear to malfunction.
A passenger texted a family member to say a bird was stuck in the wing, the News1 the agency reported. The person’s final message was: “Should I say my last words?”
The passengers included two Thai nationals and the rest were believed to be South Koreans, according to the Ministry of Transport.
The plane was a Boeing 737-800 operated by Jeju Air, which was seeking details of the crash, including the victims and cause, an airline spokesman said. The Transport Ministry said the plane was manufactured in 2009.
Jeju Air posted a message apologizing for the accident.
Boeing 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 to the families who lost their loved ones and our thoughts remain with the passengers and the crew.”
The US Federal Aviation Administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
All domestic and international flights at Muan airport had been cancelled. Yonhap reported.
South Korea’s acting president Choi Sang-mok, named the country’s interim leader on Friday amid an ongoing political crisis, arrived at the crash site and said the government was putting all its resources into dealing with the crash. .
Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra sent his condolences to the families of the dead and injured in a post on X, saying he had ordered the Foreign Ministry to provide assistance.
The Thai ministry said in a statement that it was in contact with South Korean authorities.
