179 people, including four crew members, have been confirmed killed after a Jeju Air flight carrying 181 crashed at South Korea’s Muan International Airport on Sunday
The Transport Ministry said the plane 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, and local health officials said they remain conscious.
The two confirmed survivors of the Jeju Air crash in South Korea were rescued from the plane’s tail section, the only part of the aircraft that retained some of its shape, Muan fire chief Lee Jung-hyun told a briefing.
The survivors of the crash, a male and a female crew member, are being treated in hospital.
“Only the tail part retains a little bit of shape, and the rest of (the plane) looks almost impossible to recognize,” the fire chief said.
Video and images from the scene show the mottled and charred remains of the aircraft, most of it turned black from the fire. Only the tail section is visibly intact.
Footage of the crash aired by YTN television showed the Jeju Air plane skidding across the airstrip, apparently with its landing gear still closed, and colliding head-on with a concrete wall on the outskirts of the facility.
Other local TV stations aired footage showing thick plumes of black smoke billowing from the plane, which was engulfed in flames.
Lee Jeong-hyeon, chief of the Muan fire station, told a televised briefing that the plane was destroyed, with only the tail assembly remaining recognisable among the wreckage.
He said workers are looking into various possibilities for the cause of the crash, 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 1.
The last time South Korea suffered a large-scale air disaster was in 1997, when a Korean Airline plane crashed in Guam, killing 228 people on board. In 2013, an Asiana Airlines plane crash-landed in San Francisco, killing three and injuring approximately 200.
Source: CNN
