At least 174 people have been killed when an Jeju Air plane belly-landed and veered off the runway, erupting in a fireball as it slammed into a wall at South Korea’s Muan International Airport.
Jeju Air flight 7C2216, arriving from the Thai capital Bangkok with 175 passengers and six crew on board, was attempting to land shortly on Sunday morning at the airport in the south of the country, South Korea’s transport ministry said.
Two people, both crew members, were rescued, and officials have suggested the rest are presumed dead.
It’s the deadliest air accident ever on South Korean soil, and the worst involving a South Korean airline in nearly three decades, according to ministry data.
The twin-engine Boeing 737-800 was seen in video broadcast on local media skidding down the runway with no apparent landing gear before slamming into a wall in an explosion of flames and debris.
The two crew members, a man and a woman, were rescued from the tail section of the burning plane, Muan fire chief Lee Jung-hyun told a briefing.
“Only the tail part retains a little bit of shape, and the rest of (the plane) looks almost impossible to recognise,” he said.
Authorities switched from rescue to recovery operations, and were searching nearby areas for bodies possibly thrown from the plane, Lee said.
The two crew were being treated at hospitals with medium to severe injuries, health officials said.
Hours after the crash, family members gathered in the airport’s arrival area, some crying and hugging as Red Cross volunteers handed out blankets.
Families screamed and wept loudly as a medic announced the names of 22 victims identified by their fingerprints.
The crash is the worst by any South Korean airline since a 1997 Korean Air crash in Guam that killed more than 200 people, according to transportation ministry data.
The worst on South Korean soil was an Air China crash that killed 129.
Investigators were looking into bird strikes and weather conditions as possible factors, Lee said.
Yonhap cited airport authorities as saying a bird strike might have caused the landing gear to malfunction.
The control tower issued a bird strike warning and shortly afterward the pilots declared mayday, a transport ministry official said, without specifying whether the flight said it struck any birds.
The aircraft attempted to land soon after the mayday call, the official said.
A passenger texted a relative to say a bird was stuck in the wing, the News1 agency reported, with the person’s final message being: “Should I say my last words?”
The passengers included two Thai nationals and the rest are believed to be South Koreans, according to the transportation ministry.
The Boeing 737-800 jet, operated by Jeju Air, was manufactured in 2009, the transport ministry said.
Jeju Air CEO Kim E-bae apologised for the accident, bowing deeply during a televised briefing.
He said the cause of the crash was still unknown, that the aircraft had no record of accidents and there were no early signs of malfunction.
The airline would co-operate with investigators and make supporting the bereaved its top priority, Kim said.
No abnormal conditions were reported when the aircraft left Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, Airports of Thailand said.
It’s the first fatal flight for Jeju Air, a low-cost airline founded in 2005.
Boeing said in a statement that it was in contact with Jeju Air and stood ready to provide support, and extended its “deepest condolences” to the families who lost loved ones.
All domestic and international flights at Muan airport had been cancelled, Yonhap reported.
South Korean Acting President Choi Sang-mok, named interim leader of the country on Friday in an ongoing political crisis, visited the scene of the accident and said the government was putting all its resources into dealing with the crash.
Two Thai women were on the plane, aged 22 and 45, the Thai government said.
Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra sent condolences to the families of the dead and injured in a post on X, saying she had instructed the foreign ministry to provide assistance.
