The aircraft reportedly struck birds this Sunday, December 29 during its landing in Muan, a town in the southwest of the country. Firefighters are currently reporting two survivors out of the 181 people on board.
A Jeju Air plane carrying 181 people crashed and caught fire on Sunday, December 29, apparently following a collision with birds while landing at Muan airport, in the southwest of the South Korea. The accident left at least 120 dead, according to firefighters. “So far, [il y a] 2 survivors and 120 dead,” said the firefighters. 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 9:03 a.m. local time (1:03 a.m. French time). The plane, which came from Bangkok, was carrying 175 passengers, including 2 Thai nationals and 6 crew members.
“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 following an investigation. said Lee Jeong-hyun, head of the Muan Fire Station, at a press briefing.
Passengers ejected during collision with barrier
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.
“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 this Sunday afternoon to Muan, located in about 290 kilometers south of Seoul, the capital.
Birds, a fear for pilots
This is the first fatal accident in the history of Jeju Air, one of the largest South Korean low-cost airlines, founded in 2005. On August 12, 2007, a Jeju Air Bombardier Q400 carrying 74 passengers went out of 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 offer our sincere apologies,” wrote the company in a press release published Sunday on its social networks.
Plane accidents 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 a pilot’s dread, especially when it comes to jet planes whose engines can quickly lose power or even stop completely after hitting 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 became known as the “Miracle on the Hudson” as all passengers and crew escaped alive.
