Only two of the 181 people on board the Boeing 737-800 operated by South Korean budget airline Jeju Air survived Sunday’s crash.
In a video, the plane, without its landing gear deployed, can be seen crashing and overshooting a landing strip at Muan International Airport in southern South Korea before hitting a concrete fence and catch fire.
Preliminary analyzes indicate that the pilots received a bird strike alert from the ground control center and issued a distress signal. The plane also reportedly had an engine problem, but many experts believe the landing gear problem was likely the main cause of the accident.
The South Korean government has launched safety inspections on all 101 Boeing 737-800 aircraft in the country. The Transport Ministry said authorities are reviewing maintenance and operating records during five days of safety checks which are expected to last until Friday.
The department said a delegation of eight U.S. investigators – one from the Federal Aviation Administration, three from the National Transportation Safety Board and four from Boeing – visited the crash site on Tuesday. The results of their review were not immediately made public.
Jeju Air Chairman Kim E-bae told reporters Tuesday that his airline will hire more maintenance personnel and reduce operations by 10 to 15 percent through March as part of efforts to improve airline safety. its flight operations.
South Korean authorities also announced that they will try to determine whether the Muan airport locator – a concrete fence housing a set of antennas designed to guide planes safely during landings – should have been made with lighter materials that would break more easily upon impact.
The accident was the deadliest disaster in South Korean aviation history in decades. A seven-day national mourning was declared until January 4.
The Transportation Ministry said Tuesday that authorities had identified 175 bodies and were conducting DNA tests to identify the rest.
On Tuesday, Park Han Shin, a representative of the families, accused the government of failing to provide freezers on time as promised and raised concerns about the decomposition of the bodies.
“The last dignity of the victims is seriously damaged. We strongly criticize the authorities for not having kept their promise,” denounced Mr. Park.
