A Jeju Air plane carrying 181 people from Thailand to South Korea crashed on arrival on Sunday, smashing into a barrier and bursting into flames, killing everyone aboard except for two flight attendants rescued from the wreckage.
A bird strike was cited by authorities as the likely cause of the crash — the worst-ever aviation disaster on South Korean soil — which flung passengers out of the plane and left it “almost completely destroyed”, according to fire officials.
Video showed the Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 landing on its belly at Muan International Airport, skidding off the runway as smoke streamed out from the engines, before crashing into a wall and exploding in flames.
South Korean investigators said on Monday that 141 of the 179 victims had now been identified using DNA analysis or fingerprint collection.
A bird strike was cited by authorities as the likely cause of the crash — the worst-ever aviation disaster on South Korean soil. Source: AP / Maeng Dae-hwan
Victims’ families camped out at the airport overnight in special tents set up in the airport lounge after a long, painful day waiting for news of their loved ones.
“I had a son on board that plane,” said an elderly man waiting in the airport lounge, who asked not to be named, saying that his son’s body had not yet been identified.
Only two people — both flight attendants — were rescued from the crash, the fire department said.
“Passengers were ejected from the aircraft after it collided with the wall, leaving little chance of survival,” a local fire official told families at a briefing, according to a statement released by the fire brigade.
Both black boxes — the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder — have been found, deputy transport minister Joo Jong-wan said at a briefing.
Under floodlights, rescue workers used a giant yellow crane to lift the burned-out fuselage of the orange-and-white aircraft on the runway at Muan — some 288km south-west of Seoul.
Bits of plane seats and luggage were strewn across the field next to the runway, not far from the charred tail, offering a glimpse into the catastrophic impact of the crash.
What caused the Jeju Air crash?
On Monday, transport ministry officials said as the pilots made a scheduled approach they told air traffic control the aircraft had suffered a bird strike, shortly after the control tower gave them a warning birds were spotted in the vicinity.
The pilots then issued a mayday warning and signalled their intention to abandon their landing and to go around and try again.
Shortly afterwards, the aircraft came down on the runway in a belly landing, touching down about 1,200m along the 2,800m runway and sliding into a structure at the end of the runway. Footage shows the plane hitting a barrier, prompting it to burst into flames.
A number of fatal aviation accidents have occurred globally due to bird strikes — an aircraft colliding with a bird during flight — which can cause a loss of power if the animals are sucked into the air intakes.
Bird strikes can also cause fires inside the plane’s engines, damaging critical systems which can render the landing gear inoperable — meaning the wheels don’t come out to facilitate a smooth landing — former pilot Kim Kwang-il told Agence France-Presse.
Experts say many questions remain, including why the plane appeared to be travelling so fast, why its landing gear did not appear to be down when it skidded down the runway, and the position of the wall that the plane crashed into.
Experts say many questions remain over the cause of the crash. Source: AAP, EPA / Han Myung-Gu
“Normally, on an airport with a runway at the end, you don’t have a wall,” Christian Beckert, a flight safety expert and Lufthansa pilot based in Munich, told the Reuters news agency.
“You more have maybe an engineered material arresting system, which lets the airplane sink into the ground a little bit and brakes (it).”
Kim, also a professor at Silla University Aeronautical Science, shared similar sentiments with Agence France-Presse.
He said he was “quite upset” to see the collision with the wall, saying there should not have been any solid structures in the area, to allow for emergency landings.
“Most of the passengers died because of this obstruction, which is devastating,” he said.
“While the bird strike, or ‘act of God,’ was the root cause of the accident and unavoidable, the presence of this structure turned it into a tragedy,” he said, as without it, the plane could have skidded to a safe stop.
Joo Jong-wan, the deputy transport minister, said the barrier was a so-called localiser, which is a ” type of navigational aid.”
“The specific foundation on which these devices are placed varies depending on the airport,” he said, with no “standardised or uniform design.”
At Muan, like several other airports in South Korea, the localisers were on “piled-up soil, and concrete structures have been installed within these soil layers,” he said.
“The connection between these localisers and the accident will be thoroughly examined during the investigation process,” Joo added.
The two survivors were transferred to separate hospitals in Seoul, the local press agency reported. Source: EPA / Yonhap
The two survivors were transferred to separate hospitals in Seoul, the Yonhap news agency reported.
“When I woke up, I had already been rescued,” a 33-year-old flight attendant told doctors, according to Ju Woong, who heads the Ewha Womans University Seoul Hospital.
He suffered multiple fractures, while the other crew member — a 25-year-old woman — injured her ankle and head, Yonhap reported.
Seven days of national mourning, ‘thorough investigation’ in South Korea
Low-cost carrier Jeju Air said it “sincerely” apologised — with top officials shown bowing deeply at a press conference in Seoul — and vowed to do all it could to help.
Boeing said in a statement that it was in touch with Jeju Air and stood “ready to support them”.
South Korea’s , convened an emergency cabinet meeting and then visited the crash site at Muan.
South Korea’s acting president, Choi Sang-mok (centre) pays tribute to the victims of the Jeju Air plane crash at a memorial altar in Muan. Source: AAP, EPA / Han Myung-Gu
The country declared a seven-day national mourning period effective from Sunday, with memorial altars to be set up nationwide.
Choi, an unelected bureaucrat who became acting president after his two predecessors were impeached, said on Monday a “thorough investigation into the cause of the accident” would be conducted.
He also said South Korea would conduct “an urgent safety inspection of the overall aircraft operation system” to prevent future aviation disasters.
Smoke rising after the crash. Source: AP / Maeng Dae-hwan
It is the first fatal accident in the history of Jeju Air, one of South Korea’s largest low-cost carriers, which was set up in 2005.
On 12 August 2007, a Bombardier Q400 operated by Jeju Air carrying 74 passengers came off the runway due to strong winds at the southern Busan-Gimhae airport, resulting in a dozen injuries.
South Korea’s aviation industry has a solid track record for safety, experts say.
Last year, while it was preparing to land. The aircraft landed safely, but several people were hospitalised.
