179 killed as S Korean plane overshoots runway, crashes

As many as 179 passengers were killed when a plane skidded off the runway and burst into flames after hitting a concrete fence at South Korea’s Muan International Airport, 290 km south of Seoul, on Sunday.

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Only two of the 181 passengers on board Jeju Air flight 7C2216 survived the crash — one of the worst in country’s aviation history. The landing gear of the 15-year-old Boeing 737-800 aircraft apparently failed to deploy as it arrived from Bangkok.

The plane was carrying 175 passengers and six crew. Among the dead were 85 women, 84 men and 10 others whose gender wasn’t immediately identifiable, its fire agency said. Emergency workers pulled out two people, both crew, to safety. Health officials said they were conscious and not in a life-threatening condition.

Among the 177 bodies found so far, the officials had identified 88, the agency said. The passengers were predominantly of South Korean origin, besides two Thai nationals.

The fire agency deployed 32 fire trucks and several helicopters to contain the blaze. Nearly 1,500 firefighters, police officers, soldiers and other officials were rushed to the site, the fire agency and transport ministry said. Footage of the crash showed the plane skidding across the airstrip at high speed, apparently with its landing gear still closed, overrunning the runway and colliding head-on with a concrete wall on the outskirts of the facility.

Lee Jeong-hyeon, chief of the Muan fire station, said the plane was completely destroyed in the fire, with only the tail assembly remaining recognisable among the wreckage. Lee said workers were looking into various possibilities to ascertain the cause of the crash, including whether the aircraft was struck by birds.

The transport ministry officials later said communication records suggested the airport control tower had issued a bird strike warning to the plane shortly before it intended to land. The pilot sent out a distress signal shortly before the plane overshot the runway, the officials said.

The workers retrieved the flight data and cockpit voice recorders of the plane, which would be examined by experts investigating the cause of the crash. It might take months for investigators to complete their probe. The runway at the Muan airport would be closed until January 1, the ministry said.

Thailand Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra expressed condolences to the families of those affected by the accident. Kerati Kijmanawat, director of Airports of Thailand, said the flight had departed from the Suvarnabhumi airport with no reports of abnormal conditions.

Jeju Air, in a statement, expressed “deep apology” over the crash and said it would do its “utmost to manage the aftermath of the accident”. Its president Kim E-bae took “full responsibility” for the incident.

Boeing, in a statement, said it was in touch with Jeju Air and was ready to support the company in dealing with the crash. “We extend our deepest condolences to the families who lost loved ones, and our thoughts remain with the passengers and crew,” Boeing said.

Family members wailed as officials announced the names of some of the victims at the Muan airport.

It was the first fatal flight for Jeju Air, a low-cost airline founded in 2005 that ranks behind only Korean Air Lines and Asiana Airlines in terms of the number of passengers in South Korea. The accident happened only three weeks after Jeju Air started regular flights from Muan to Bangkok and other Asian cities. The last time South Korea suffered a large-scale air disaster was in 1997, when a Korean Airline plane crashed in Guam, killing 228 on board.

This is also one of the worst landing mishaps since July 2007 when all 187 people on board and 12 others on the ground were killed when an Airbus A320 slid off a slick airstrip in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and collided with a nearby building. In 2010, 158 persons were killed when an Air India Express aircraft overshot a runway in Mangalore and plummeted into a gorge before erupting into flames.