A passenger plane carrying 181 people, including six crew members, crashed in southwestern South Korea on early Sunday, killing at least 96 people, according to Korea’s National Fire Agency.
This would mark the worst aviation crash accident involving a Korean airline since a Korean Air Lines Co.’s plane crash in Guam in 1997, which killed 229.
A plane operated by Korea’s Jeju Air Co., which departed Bangkok earlier, was scheduled to land at Muan International Airport at 8:30 am but failed in an earlier attempt because it could not lower its landing gear, according to the aviation authorities.
When the plane attempted a belly landing without the deployment of its landing gear about 30 minutes later, it was rammed into a wall near the end of the runway after touching down and engulfed in a huge fire and flames, several Korean TV footages of Korean news media showed.
Rescuers have found at least 96 dead as of midday on Sunday. But all of them on board are presumed dead, except two rescued people, who are both crew members.
The fire department is also skeptical that rescuers would find more people alive, citing the badly destroyed plane broken into many pieces with only its tail section recognizable. The rescue operation has now turned into a recovery operation.
Of the 181 people on board, two passengers were Thai nationals, Thailand’s Foreign Ministry confirmed. Other foreign nationals have not been yet reported.
The cause of the accident is not confirmed but the landing gear malfunction was believed to have been caused by a bird strike, according to unnamed sources.
One TV footage showed a fire in one of the plane’s engines while flying over the airport before its final landing. One of the two rescued crew members also told investigators the one of the plane’s engines exploded with smoke as it approached the airport for landing.
The plane was a Boeing 737-800, which has been widely used by low-cost airlines. Jeju Air started operating the crashed plane 15 years ago.
KOREAN AIRLINE’S WORST PLANE CRASH SINCE 1997
Today’s crash would mark Korea’s deadliest plane crash accident since a Korean Air jet slammed into a hill in Guam, a U.S. territory in the western Pacific, in 1997, killing 229 of the 254 people on the plane.
This is also the worst plane accident on Korean soil. Previous major plane accidents in the country were an Air China accident near Gimhae Airpor in 2002, killing 129, and the 1993 Asiana Airlines crash in Mokpo, killing 68 people.
This is also the first fatal accident for not only Jeju Air, Korea’s largest low-cost carrier, since its inception in 2005 and the country’s LLC history.
Jeju Air Chief Executive Kim Yi-bae deeply apologized to everyone who suffered in the accident and their families in a press conference held on Sunday afternoon.
“We will do everything we can to deal with this accident,” said Kim, adding that the airline will work with the government to find a cause, which is not yet confirmed.
By Jeong-Hoon An
Ajh6321@hankyung.com
Sookyung Seo edited this article.
