At least 179 people were killed when a plane landed upside down and skidded off the runway, exploding in a fireball that crashed into a wall at South Korea’s Muan International Airport on Sunday. Yonhap reported.
Jeju Air Flight 7C2216, arriving from the Thai capital Bangkok with 181 people on board, was attempting to land shortly after 9 a.m. (5 a.m. PST) at the airport in the country’s south, the ministry said. of Transportation of South Korea.
It is the worst plane crash involving a South Korean airline in almost three decades and is on track to become the deadliest ever to occur in the country, according to ministry data.
In a video from local media, the twin-engine Boeing 737-800 can be seen sliding down the runway with no apparent landing gear before crashing into a wall in an explosion of flames and debris. Other photographs showed smoke and fire engulfing parts of the plane.
Two crew members, a man and a woman, were rescued from the tail section of the burning plane, Muan fire chief Lee Jung-hyun said at a briefing. Lee said the fire was extinguished at 1:00 p.m.
“Only the tail part retains a bit of shape, and the rest (of the plane) looks almost impossible to recognize,” he said.
Authorities have moved from rescue to recovery operations and, because of the force of the impact, are searching nearby areas for bodies possibly thrown from the plane, Lee added.
The two crew members were being treated in hospitals with medium to severe injuries, the director of the local public health center said.
The crash comes just days after a Kazakhstan Airlines plane crashed near the Kazakh city of Aktau on Wednesday, killing 38 of the 67 people on board, after attempting to land at its destination in the Russian city of Grozny and then deviate from their course through the Caspian Sea.
anadolu reported two more aviation incidents in Norway and Canada on Sunday. There were no victims.
A passenger plane flying from Norway to the Netherlands skidded off the runway during an emergency landing on Sunday.
“Flight #KL1204, a Boeing 737-800, skidded off the right side of runway 18 after landing at Oslo Torp Sandefjord Airport. The flight was diverted there shortly after taking off from Oslo Airport (OSL),” according to a statement issued by Royal Dutch Airlines and published in X.
The pilots chose to divert the aircraft to Sandefjord Torp airport, 110 kilometers from Oslo, for an emergency landing, the news portal reported. ap7am.com saying.
Although the plane landed safely, it skidded off the runway shortly after and came to rest on a grassy area adjacent to the runway, the news outlet said, citing a hydraulic system failure as the reason for the incident.
It said 176 passengers and six crew members on board were not injured, while an investigation has been launched into the incident.
Meanwhile, an Air Canada flight was forced to make an emergency landing at Halifax Stanfield International Airport after suffering a malfunction in its landing gear Saturday night.
Air Canada Flight 2259, taking off from St. John’s International Airport, experienced landing problems at 01:30 GMT resulting in a skid and engine fire, prompting a rapid response from emergency crews to ensure the safety of everyone on board, several media outlets reported.
Passenger Nikki Valentine said CBC News that one of the plane’s tires did not deploy correctly upon landing.
“The plane started to settle at about a 20-degree angle to the left, and when that happened, we heard a pretty loud sound, which almost sounded like a crash, as the plane’s wing began to skid on the pavement. along with what I assume was the engine,” he said.
Upon landing, the people on board were evacuated and then taken to a hangar to be checked by paramedics. No victims have been reported. As a precautionary measure, flights at Halifax airport were temporarily suspended following the incident, while a runway was reopened early Sunday morning.
‘My last words’
Hours after the accident, relatives gathered in the airport arrivals area, some crying and hugging each other as Red Cross volunteers handed out blankets.
Families screamed and cried loudly as a doctor announced the names of 22 victims identified by their fingerprints.
Documents were distributed for families to write down their contact information.
A family member stood in front of the microphone to ask the authorities for more information. “My older brother died and I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “I don’t know.”
Another asked journalists not to film. “We’re not monkeys in a zoo,” he said. “We are the grieving families.”
Mortuary vehicles lined up outside to take away the bodies and authorities said a temporary morgue had been set up.
The crash site smelled of jet fuel and blood, according to Reuters Witnesses and workers in protective suits and masks combed the area while soldiers searched the bushes.
Authorities had worked to rescue people in the queue section, an airport official said. Reuters shortly after the accident.
The accident is the worst suffered by any South Korean airline since the Korean Air accident in Guam in 1997, in which more than 200 people died, according to data from the Ministry of Transportation. The worst on South Korean soil was an Air China crash that killed 129 people.
Investigators are looking into bird strikes and weather conditions as possible factors, Lee said. Yonhap cited airport authorities as saying that a bird strike could have caused the landing gear to malfunction.
The control tower issued a bird strike warning and soon after the pilots declared May, a Transportation Ministry official said, without specifying whether the flight said it had struck any birds.
About a minute after the distress call, the plane made its ill-fated attempt to land, the official said.
A passenger sent a text message to a family member to inform them that a bird was trapped in the wing, News1 reported. The person’s final message was: “Should I say my last words?”
The passengers included two Thai nationals and the rest were believed to be South Koreans, according to the Ministry of Transport.
Jeju Air says mourners are top priority
Jeju Air CEO Kim E-bae apologized for the accident and bowed deeply during a televised briefing.
He said the cause of the crash was still unknown, that the plane had no history of accidents and that there were no early signs of malfunction. The airline will cooperate with investigators and make supporting the bereaved its top priority, Kim said.
No abnormal conditions were reported when the plane took off from Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, said Kerati Kijmanawat, president of Thailand Airports.
It is the first fatal flight for Jeju Air, a low-cost airline founded in 2005 that trails only Korean Air Lines and Asiana Airlines in terms of passenger numbers in South Korea.
The accident occurred just three weeks after regular flights from Muan to Bangkok and other Asian cities began on December 8.
Muan International is one of the smallest airports in South Korea, but the number of international passengers has increased almost 20 times to 310,702 from January to November this year, compared to the same period in 2022, according to government data.
Boeing said in an emailed statement: “We are in contact with Jeju Air regarding flight 2216 and stand ready to support them. “We extend our deepest condolences to the families who lost their loved ones and our thoughts remain with the passengers and crew.”
The US Federal Aviation Administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
All domestic and international flights at Muan airport were cancelled. Yonhap reported.
South Korea’s acting president Choi Sang-mok, named the country’s interim leader on Friday amid an ongoing political crisis, arrived at the crash site and said the government was putting all its resources into dealing with the accident. .
Two Thai women, aged 22 and 45, were on the plane, Thai government spokesman Jirayu Houngsub said, adding that details were still being verified.
Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra sent her condolences to the families of the dead and injured in a post on X, saying she had ordered the Foreign Ministry to provide assistance.
The ministry said in a statement that it was in contact with South Korean authorities.
President Asif Ali Zardari expressed his regret over the plane crash and extended his condolences to the families of the bereaved, according to a PPP post on X.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a post on X that he was “deeply saddened” by the accident.
“In this time of grief, our thoughts and prayers are with the grieving families and with the people and Government of the Republic of Korea.”
