A Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 en route from Thailand to South Korea crashed upon landing at Muan International Airport, resulting in a devastating loss of life. Authorities suspect a bird strike as the cause, leading to the aircraft's belly landing, skidding off the runway, and ultimately colliding with a wall, causing a fiery explosion.
MUAN - A Jeju Air plane carrying 181 people from Thailand to South Korea crashed on arrival Sunday, smashing into a barrier and bursting into flames, killing everyone aboard except for two flight attendants plucked from the wreckage. A bird strike was cited by authorities as the likely cause of the crash - the worst-ever aviation disaster on South Korea n soil - which flung passengers out of the plane and left it 'almost completely destroyed', according to fire officials.
Video showed the Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 landing on its belly at Muan International Airport, skidding off the runway as smoke streamed out from the engines, before crashing into a wall and exploding in flames. 'Of the 179 dead, 65 have been identified,' the country's fire agency said, adding that DNA retrieval had begun.An official began calling out the names of the 65 victims who had been identified, with each name triggering fresh cries of grief from waiting relatives.'Passengers were ejected from the aircraft after it collided with the wall, leaving little chance of survival,' a local fire official told families at a briefing, according to a statement released by the fire brigade.Both black boxes - the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder - have been found, deputy transport minister Joo Jong-wan said at a briefing. Under floodlights, rescue workers used a giant yellow crane to lift the burned-out fuselage of the orange-and-white aircraft on the runway at Muan - some 288 kilometres (about 180 miles) southwest of Seoul. Bits of plane seats and luggage were strewn across the field next to the runway, not far from the charred tail, offering a glimpse into the catastrophic impact of the crash.All of the passengers were Korean apart from two Thais, with the youngest a three-year-old boy and the oldest a 78-year-old, authorities said. 'I had a son on board that plane,' an elderly man waiting in the airport lounge, who asked not to be named, told AF
Aviation Disaster Plane Crash Jeju Air Muan Airport South Korea
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