All but two people were killed when a passenger plane carrying 181 people crash-landed at Muan International Airport on Dec. 29, in one of South Korea’s worst aviation disasters in years.
The Jeju Air flight returning from Bangkok, Thailand, crashed at around 9:03 a.m. at Muan International Airport in Muan, South Jeolla Province. The twin-engine Boeing 737-800 veered off the runway while landing without wheels, slammed into a wall and burst into flames.
Authorities confirmed that 179 of the 181 passengers were killed in the accident. The passengers included 173 South Koreans, two Thai nationals, and six crew members.
Emergency workers rescued two crew members, a man and a woman, from the burning wreckage. The two survivors were identified as flight attendants, Mr. Lee (33) and Ms. Koo (25). They were pulled from the tail section of the aircraft and are reportedly in stable condition without life-threatening injuries.
“Many passengers were thrown out of the aircraft after it slammed into a wall and exploded,” fire department officials said. “The chances of survival were extremely slim.” This plane crash is the deadliest aviation disaster in South Korea since the 1997 Korean Air crash in Guam, which claimed 229 lives.
Reports so far suggest the crash was caused by a malfunction in the plane’s landing gear during landing. Authorities suspect a bird strike - a collision with birds during flight - may have caused the malfunction. Footage of the crash shows the plane skidding across the airstrip at high speed for roughly 10 seconds without landing gear. Unable to reduce speed, the plane crashes into a concrete wall at the airport’s perimeter and explodes into flames. Other footage and photos show smoke and fire engulfing the plane.
The plane departed from Bangkok at 1:30 a.m. and was scheduled to land in Muan at 8:30 a.m. The transport ministry said at approximately 8:57 a.m., Muan Airport’s control tower warned the aircraft to look out for a flock of birds. Two minutes later, at 8:59 a.m., the captain declared a mayday.
The pilot aborted the initial landing attempt and circled the airport before attempting a second landing around 9:00 a.m. But the plane’s landing gear failed to deploy during the second landing attempt, and the pilot attempted a belly landing. At 9:03 a.m., the aircraft skidded off the runway after failing to decelerate and collided head-on with a wall. The transport ministry disclosed that the captain had logged 6,823 flight hours, while the co-pilot had accumulated 1,650 flight hours.
The transport ministry said it had recovered both the flight data recorder (FDR) and the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) from the crashed aircraft to investigate the cause of the accident. Muan International Airport will remain closed until 5:00 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2025.
This article has been updated several times since 11:27 a.m., Dec. 29.
