A deadly plane crash in South Korea has killed 179 people, local authorities have confirmed.
A plane with a malfunctioning landing gear veered off the runway, hit a fence and caught fire on Sunday at South Korea’s Muan International Airport, according to the emergency office and local media.
South Korea’s National Fire Agency has confirmed the deaths of 179 people, with 85 victims identified as female and 84 as male. The gender of 10 others were not immediately identifiable.
Both survivors, a man and a woman, are crew members, Muan fire chief Lee Jeong-hyeon told a briefing.
The Transport Ministry identified the plane as a 15-year-old Boeing 737-800 jet operated by Jeju Air, a budget South Korean carrier.
Lee told a televised briefing that rescue workers are continuing to search for bodies scattered by the crash impact.
The plane was completely destroyed, with only the tail assembly remaining recognisable among the wreckage, he said.
Investigators are looking into bird strikes and weather conditions as possible factors, Lee said.
The control tower issued a bird strike warning and shortly afterwards the pilots declared mayday, a transport ministry official said. They did not specify whether the flight said it struck any birds.
Footage of the crash aired by YTN television showed the Jeju Air plane skidding across the airstrip, apparently with its landing gear still closed, and colliding head-on with a concrete wall on the outskirts of the facility.
They have also aired footage showing thick pillows of black smoke billowing from the plane engulfed in flames.
The plane was a Jeju Air flight returning from Bangkok to Muan International Airport in South Jeolla Province, about 288 kilometres (179 miles) from Seoul.
A malfunction of the landing gear likely caused a passenger plane to crash while attempting a crash landing after a failed first landing attempt, authorities have said.
Senior transport ministry official Joo Jong-wan told reporters that government investigators arrived at the site to investigate the cause of the crash and fire.
The CEO of South Korean airline Jeju Air apologised to the victims of Sunday’s plane crash.
In a short media briefing, Kim E-bae said that supporting the bereaved was a top priority for now.
Boeing has confirmed that it is in contact with Jeju Air about the crash.
Deputy Prime Minister Choi Sang-mok, who assumed responsibility after the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol and acting President Han Duck-soo, ordered officials to employ all available resources to rescue the passengers and crew, according to the Yonhap news agency.
Yoon’s office said his chief secretary, Chung Jin-suk, will preside over an emergency meeting between senior presidential staff on Sunday to discuss the crash.
The last time South Korea suffered a large-scale air disaster was in 1997 when a Korean Airline plane crashed in Guam, killing 228 people on board.
It was one of the worst landing mishaps since a July 2007 crash that killed all 187 people on board and 12 others on the ground when an Airbus A320 slid off a slick airstrip in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and collided with a nearby building, according to data compiled by the Flight Safety Foundation, a non-profit group aimed at improving air safety.
With wires
