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A South Korean passenger plane crashed Sunday morning and burst into flames upon landing, killing at least 174 people and making it one of the country’s worst air disasters, local authorities said.
The Jeju Air flight was returning from Bangkok with 181 people on board when its landing gear failed to deploy at Muan International Airport in the south of the country, skidded off the runway, crashed into a wall and caught fire.
Two crew members were rescued from the rear of the plane, the National Fire and Disaster Management Agency said, but most of the passengers are feared dead, an official told South Korea’s Yonhap news agency. More than 30 trucks and several helicopters were called to the disaster.
According to the Ministry of Transport, 173 of the 175 passengers were Korean and the remaining two were Thai. There were six crew members on board.
South Korea’s acting president Choi Sang-mok, who took office on Friday after his predecessor was impeached by Congress, vowed to “investigate the cause and take measures to prevent similar accidents from happening again.”
“This is a serious situation. We want to do everything in our power to respond to the damage,” he said from the scene of the accident.
Local television news footage showed thick smoke billowing from the wreckage of the twin-engine Boeing 737-800 jet.
The airport’s control tower issued a bird strike warning about a minute before the pilot reported the mayday, the Department of Transportation said. The accident occurred five minutes later.
Ministry officials said they had recovered the plane’s flight data and cockpit voice recorder during the investigation into the crash. The pilot was a veteran with more than 6,800 flight hours.
The ministry announced that Muan Airport will be closed until January 1.
Jeju Air, a South Korean low-cost airline founded in 2005, has activated emergency protocols. “We would like to express our deepest condolences to the victims and their families. We feel a great responsibility and will do our best to investigate the exact cause of the accident,” Kim Ebbe, president of the company, said on television. said in a statement.
The airline said the plane was 15 years old and undergoing regular maintenance, and no problems were reported when it departed from Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport.
Boeing also said it was in contact with the airline regarding the incident.
The 737-800 is the “next generation” model of Boeing’s single-aisle 737 series, which has been the mainstay of short-haul air travel since its introduction in the 1990s.
Although it is gradually being replaced by the more modern and more fuel-efficient 737 Max, the Max has suffered a series of crises, including crashes in 2018 and 2019, and the quality of Boeing’s manufacturing processes and safety protocols has been compromised. There are doubts about this.
Although South Korea has improved its safety record in recent years, it has suffered several fatal accidents. According to government data, South Korean airlines have had 67 accidents in the past 10 years, resulting in 59 fatalities.
In 1983, a Korean Air flight was shot down by Soviet forces, killing all 269 people on board. In 1997, another Korean Air flight crashed in Guam, killing 228 of the 254 people on board. In 2013, an Asiana Airlines flight crashed while preparing to land in San Francisco, killing three people and injuring 187 others.
Sunday’s tragedy was the second fatal accident in recent days. On Wednesday, an Azerbaijan Airlines airliner crashed into Kazakhstan after changing course from Grozny over the Caspian Sea, killing 38 of the 67 people on board.
U.S. and Ukrainian officials blamed Russian anti-aircraft fire for the accident. Russian authorities blamed dense fog and flocks of birds for the diversion, but also said it occurred while Ukrainian military combat drones were attacking a nearby city.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday apologized to Azerbaijan for the “tragic incident” but did not comment on the alleged Russian interference.
Additional reporting by Philip Georgiadis in London
