At least 96 people were killed this Sunday in the crash of a Jeju Air plane coming from Bangkok, which crashed and caught fire while landing at Muan airport, in the southwest of South Korea, probably following a collision with birds. “So far, two survivors – both crew members – and 96 dead,” the firefighters said in a statement. They had previously indicated that one of the two survivors was a passenger.
“The plane is almost completely destroyed and the identification of the deceased is proving difficult”
According to them, the plane was “almost completely destroyed” and the passengers and crew members had “little chance of survival”. “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.
181 people on board
According to authorities, the accident of flight JJA-2216 occurred on Sunday at 9:03 a.m. local time. The plane was carrying 181 people (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 presumed to be a collision with birds combined with adverse weather conditions”
“The cause of the accident is presumed to be a collision with birds combined with adverse weather conditions. However, the exact cause will be announced after an investigation,” Lee Jeong-hyun, head of the Muan Fire Station, said at a press briefing.
Engulfed in flames
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 then appeared to hit an obstacle at the end of the runway and was immediately engulfed in flames.
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 South Korean President Choi Sang-mok chaired an emergency government meeting and is traveling to Muan on Sunday afternoon, his office said. “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. “Jeju Air will do everything in its power to deal with this accident. We offer our sincere apologies,” the company wrote in a statement published on its social networks on Sunday.
Plane crashes are very rare in South Korea. The most serious in the country remains 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.
Before Sunday's accident, the last fatal accident at a South Korean airline was that of an Asiana Boeing 777 which missed its landing at San Francisco airport, killing three people and injuring 182 on July 6. 2013. And the deadliest disaster for a South Korean company remains that of a Korean Air Boeing 747 connecting New York to Seoul via Anchorage (Alaska), which was shot down by a Soviet fighter above the Sea of Japan, causing the death of 246 passengers and 23 crew members on September 1, 1983.
