Jeju Air flight 7C2216, arriving from the Thai capital Bangkok with 175 passengers and six crew on board, was attempting to land shortly after 9 a.m. (0000 GMT) at the airport in the south of the country, South Korea’s transport ministry said.
It is 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 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. The fire was extinguished as of 1 p.m., Lee said.
Authorities switched from rescue to recovery operations and because of the force of the impact, were searching nearby areas for bodies possibly thrown from the plane, Lee added.
‘MY LAST WORDS’
Families screamed and wept loudly as a medic announced the names of 22 victims identified by their fingerprints.
One relative stood at a microphone to ask for more information from authorities. “My older brother died and I don’t know what’s going on,“ he said. “I don’t know.”
Mortuary vehicles lined up outside to take bodies away, and authorities said a temporary morgue had been established.
Authorities had worked to rescue people in the tail section, an airport official told Reuters shortly after the crash.
Investigators are looking into bird strikes and weather conditions as possible factors, Lee said. Yonhap cited airport authorities as saying a bird strike may have caused the landing gear to malfunction.
Soon after the mayday call the aircraft made its ill-fated attempt to land, the official said.
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.
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 will cooperate with investigators and make supporting the bereaved its top priority, Kim said.
It is 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.
Muan International is one of South Korea’s smallest airports but it has seen the number of international passengers jump nearly 20 times to 310,702 from January to November this year, from the same period in 2022, according to government data.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
South Korean acting President Choi Sang-mok, named interim leader of the country on Friday in an ongoing political crisis, arrived at the scene of the accident and said the government was putting all its resources into dealing with the crash.
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.
The ministry said in a statement it was in touch with the South Korean authorities.
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