At least 85 people were killed when an airliner veered off the runway and erupted into a
fireball as it slammed into a wall at South Korea’s Muan International Airport on Sunday, the national fire agency said.
Two people were rescued, the agency said.
The crash occurred as Jeju Air flight 7C2216, carrying 175 passengers and six crew on a flight from the Thai capital Bangkok, was landing shortly after 9 a.m. (0000 GMT) at the
airport in southern Korea, the transport ministry said.
At least 58 bodies have been recovered but that number is not final, another fire official told Reuters.
Two people were found alive and rescue operations were under way, a Muan fire official said. Yonhap news agency said three people had been rescued.
Authorities were working to rescue people in the tail section, an airport official told Reuters shortly after the crash in South Korea.
Video shared by local media showed the twin-engine aircraft skidding down the runway with no apparent landing gear before slamming into a wall in an explosion of flame and debris. Other
photos showed smoke and fire engulfing parts of the plane.
Yonhap cited airport authorities as saying the landing gear may have malfunctioned due to a bird strike.
A passenger texted a relative to say a bird was stuck in the wing, agency News1 reported. The person’s final message was, “Should I say my last words?”
Bird strike is among several theories that have not been verified, an official from South Korea transport ministry’s aviation department said, adding that the investigation was ongoing.
The passengers included two Thai nationals and the rest are believed to be South Koreans, according to the transportation ministry.
The plane was a Boeing 737-800 jet operated by Jeju Air, which was seeking details of the accident, including its casualties and cause, an airline spokesperson said.
All domestic and international flights at Muan airport had been cancelled, Yonhap reported.
South Korean acting President Choi Sang-mok, who was named interim leader of the country on Friday after the previous acting president was impeached amid an ongoing political crisis,
ordered all-out rescue efforts, his office said. His chief of staff has convened an emergency meeting.
The incident comes days after the Christmas crash of Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8432 in Kazaksthan. Officials in Baku say a Russian missile was fired at Flight 8432 during drone activity above Grozny, and the shrapnel hit the Embraer 190 plane as the missile exploded next to the aircraft mid-flight.
In July 2014, Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down by a Russian SAM while overflying eastern Ukraine.
(With inputs from Reuters)
