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December 30, 2024 | 11:48 am
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Jeju Air plane crash has been called South Korea's deadliest plane crash. All 179 people were killed when the plane landed upside down and skidded off the end of the runway on Sunday, December 29, 2024. The plane exploded into a ball of fire as it hit a wall at Muan International Airport, South Korea.
The plane, carrying 175 passengers and six crew members, had just arrived from the Thai capital, Bangkok. Jeju Air attempted to land shortly after 9 a.m., according to South Korea's transport ministry.
Two crew members survived and were being treated for injuries.
According to the transport ministry, this is the deadliest air crash on South Korean soil and the worst involving a South Korean airline in nearly three decades. Reported by Reuters, the twin-engine Boeing 737-800 aircraft was seen in local media videos sliding down the runway without landing gear. The plane then hit navigation equipment and a wall in an explosion of fire and debris.
"Only the tail section is still slightly deformed, and the rest (of the plane) looks almost impossible to recognize," Muan fire chief Lee Jung-hyun told a news conference.
The two crew members, a man and a woman, were rescued from the burning tail section of the plane, Lee said. They were hospitalized with moderate to severe injuries, the head of a local public health center said.
Investigators are looking into the possibility of a bird strike and weather conditions as possible factors in the crash. Yonhap news agency quoted airport authorities as saying the strike may have caused the landing gear to fail.
The last plane crash involving a South Korean airline was in 1997. A Korean Air crash in Guam in 1997 killed more than 200 people, according to the Transportation Ministry. The previous worst crash on South Korean soil was an Air China crash that killed 129 people in 2002.
Experts say the reported bird strike and the way the plane attempted to land raise more questions than answers. "There are still a lot of unanswered questions right now. Why was the plane going so fast? Why weren't the wings open? Why weren't the landing gear down?," said Gregory Alegi, an aviation expert and former lecturer at the Italian air force academy.
Under global aviation rules, South Korea will lead a civil investigation into the crash. South Korea automatically involved the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in the United States, where the plane was designed and built.
The NTSB said it was leading a U.S. investigation to assist South Korean aviation authorities. Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration are also involved.
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