Flaming crash kills at least 167 in South Korea’s worst plane crash By Reuters
By Ju-min Park, Hongji Kim and Hyunsu Yim
MUAN COUNTY, South Korea (Reuters) – About 167 people were killed when a Jeju Air plane skidded off the road and burst into flames when it hit a wall at Muan International Airport on Sunday. said the fire department.
Jeju Air flight 7C2216, arriving from the Thai capital of Bangkok with 175 passengers and six crew members, was trying to land after 9:00 a.m. (0000 GMT) at the airport in the south of the country, South Korea’s Ministry of Transport said.
Two people, both workers, were rescued, but officials said the rest were presumed dead.
It is South Korea’s worst-ever plane crash, and the worst involving a South Korean airline in nearly three decades, according to ministry data.
The twin-engine Boeing (NYSE: ) 737-800 was seen on video broadcast by local media skimming the runway with no visible landing gear before crashing into a wall as flames and debris erupted. Other images showed smoke and flames 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 news conference. The fire was extinguished by 1 p.m., Lee said.
“Only the tail part keeps a small shape, and the rest (of the plane) seems impossible to see,” he said.
Authorities shifted from rescue operations to recovery operations and due to the force of the impact, were searching nearby areas for bodies that may have been thrown from the plane, Lee added.
The two workers were treated in hospitals for moderate or severe injuries, said the head of the government health center.
‘MY LAST WORDS’
Hours after the crash, family members gathered at the airport landing, some crying and hugging as Red Cross volunteers delivered blankets.
The families screamed and cried loudly when the doctor announced the names of the 22 victims identified by their fingerprints.
Papers were distributed for families to write their information.
Another relative stood on the microphone to ask for more information from the authorities. “My older brother is dead, I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “I don’t know.”
Another asked reporters not to record. “We are not monkeys in a zoo,” he said. “We are a lost family.”
Mortuary vehicles have lined up outside to collect the bodies, and authorities say a temporary morgue has been set up.
The crash site showed jet fuel and blood, according to Reuters witnesses, and workers wearing suits and masks combed the area as soldiers searched the forest.
Authorities were working to rescue people in the tailgate, an airport official told Reuters shortly after the crash.
The accident was the worst for any South Korean airline since the 1997 Korean Air crash in Guam that killed more than 200 people, according to data from the transportation ministry. The worst on South Korean soil was the Air China (OTC:) crash that killed 129.
Investigators are looking at bird strikes and weather as possible factors, Lee said. Yonhap quoted airport authorities as saying that the bird strike may have caused the equipment to malfunction.
The control tower issued a bird strike warning and shortly thereafter the pilots declared a Mayday, said a Transport Department official, without specifying whether the plane struck any birds.
Shortly after the Mayday call the plane made its unsuccessful attempt to land, the official said.
The passenger wrote a message to his relative saying that there is a bird stuck in the wing, reports News1. The person’s last message was, “Should I say my last words?”
The passengers included two Thai nationals and others believed to be South Koreans, according to the Ministry of Transport.
JEJU AIR SAYS THE DEAD ARE OF MORE IMPORTANT THINGS
The Boeing 737-800 aircraft, operated by Jeju Air, was manufactured in 2009, the Department of Transportation said.
Jeju Air CEO Kim E-bae apologized for the accident, bowing deeply while speaking on television.
He said the cause of the accident was not yet known, he said the plane had no history of accidents and there were no early signs of malfunction. The airline will cooperate with investigators and make supporting the victims its top priority, Kim said.
No adverse conditions were reported when the flight took off from 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 Korea Air Lines and Asiana Airlines in terms of passenger numbers in South Korea.
The accident happened just three weeks after it started regular flights from Muan to Bangkok and other Asian cities on December 8.
Muan International is one of South Korea’s smallest airlines but saw the number of international passengers jump nearly 20 times to 310,702 from January to November this year, from the same period in 2022, according to government data.
Boeing said in an emailed statement, “We are in contact with Jeju Air regarding flight 2216 and are ready to support them. Our condolences go out to the families who lost their loved ones, and our thoughts are 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.
South Korea’s acting president Choi Sang-mok, who was appointed as the country’s interim leader on Friday in an ongoing political crisis, arrived at the scene of the accident and said the government was using all its resources to deal with the disaster.
Two Thai women were on the plane, aged 22 and 45, said Thai government spokesman Jirayu Houngsub, adding that the details were still being confirmed.
Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra sent condolences to the families of those killed and injured at the X pole, saying he had ordered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to provide assistance.
The ministry said in a statement that it is in contact with South Korean authorities.
