A South Korean Plane Crashed While Landing And Almost All 181 Passengers Are Dead
A passenger plane belonging to Jeju Airlines crashed in South Korea’s Muan International Airport on Sunday Dec. 29, killing almost all 181 people on board, with only two survivors.
A passenger plane belonging to Jeju Airlines crashed in South Korea’s Muan International Airport on Sunday Dec. 29, killing almost all 181 people on board, with only two survivors.
Flight 7C 2216, which was carrying 175 passengers and six crew members, was flying from Bangkok, Thailand, to Muan county, in southwest South Korea.
Around 9 am local time, the airplane crashed into the outer wall of the airport’s runway as it was trying to land..
Video from local news showed the airplane attempting to land without its landing gear, skidding on the ground before crashing into the wall, where it erupted in flames.
State media Yonhap reported a bird strike is among one of the theories that may have caused the landing gear to malfunction, but it has yet to be verified,, according to Reuters.
Photos showed the airplane completely destroyed.
Firefighters completely extinguished the fire and started the search and rescue operation of passengers, but authorities said by Sunday evening that besides two survivors, the rest of the 179 people on board have died.
"After colliding with the wall, the passengers spilled out of the plane. There is almost no chance of survival," the fire department said.
Authorities are still investigating the reason behind the malfunction and the airplane’s black box — a device that records important flight data and located at the airplane’s tail— will be obtained once the bodies are all recovered, according to CNN.
Jeju Airlines has released a statement expressing its condolences to the passengers and families and promised to work with local authorities to identify the cause of the accident.
This is the deadliest airplane crash in South Korea since 1997.
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