There were 181 people on board: a plane crashes on the runway and catches fire, several dozen dead in South Korea

A Jeju Air plane carrying 181 people crashed and caught fire on Sunday, apparently following a collision with birds while landing at Muan airport in southwestern South Korea , an accident which left at least 120 dead according to firefighters.

120 dead

“So far, two survivors and 120 dead,” firefighters said in a statement. They had previously clarified that the two survivors extracted from the wreckage of the plane were members of the crew.

According to authorities, the accident of flight JJA-2216, one of the deadliest in South Korean history, occurred at 9 a.m. (midnight GMT) on Sunday. The plane was carrying 175 passengers, including two Thai nationals, and six crew members between Bangkok and Muan, a city located about 290 kilometers south of the capital Seoul.

“The cause of the accident is believed to be a collision with birds combined with adverse weather conditions. However, the exact cause will be announced following an investigation,” said Lee Jeong-hyun, head of the Muan Fire Station, at a press briefing.

A video broadcast by local channel MBC shows the aircraft – a Boeing 737-8AS which entered service in 2009, according to the specialist site Flightradar – landing with smoke escaping from the engines. The plane hit a wall at the end of the runway and was immediately engulfed in flames.

“Little chance of surviving”

“The passengers were ejected from the plane when it collided with a barrier, leaving them with little chance of survival,” a local fire official said during a meeting with the victims' families. “The plane is almost completely destroyed and the identification of the deceased is proving difficult,” he added.

Images broadcast by South Korean television channels show numerous emergency service vehicles and dozens of firefighters working around the carcass of the plane, completely charred except for the tail, and evacuating on stretchers of bodies wrapped in blue shrouds.

Acting head of state appointed Friday in a country shaken by a serious political crisis, Choi Sang-mok, chaired an emergency government meeting and is due to go to Muan on Sunday afternoon, announced his office. “All agencies concerned […] must mobilize all available resources to save people”, he ordered in a press release.

“Sincere apologies”

This is the first fatal accident in the history of Jeju Air, one of South Korea's largest low-cost airlines, founded in 2005.

On August 12, 2007, a Jeju Air Bombardier Q400 carrying 74 passengers went off the runway in strong winds at Busan-Gimhae airport (south), causing around ten minor injuries.

“Jeju Air will do everything in its power to deal with this accident. We sincerely apologize,” wrote the company in a press release published Sunday on its social networks.

Plane accidents: a rarity in South Korea

Plane crashes are very rare in South Korea. The deadliest to have occurred in the country was the crash on a hill near Busan-Gimhae airport of an Air China Boeing 767 coming from Beijing, which left 129 dead on April 15, 2002.

Hitting birds in flight is the dread of pilots, especially when it comes to jet planes whose engines can quickly lose power or even stop completely after ingesting a bird.

In 2009, a US Airways Airbus A320 made a forced landing in the Hudson River, in New York, after the shutdown of its two reactors which had sucked in birds. The accident is known as “Miracle on the Hudson”, all passengers and crew members escaped alive.