A passenger jet skidded off the runway at a South Korean airport on Sunday, crashing into a concrete fence and bursting into flames after its front landing gear failed to operate. All but two of the 181 on board died in one of the country’s worst aviation disasters.
The National Fire Agency (NFA) said rescuers rushed to pull people from the Jeju Air plane at the airport in the city of Muan, which is 290 kilometers south of the capital, Seoul.
Emergency officials later confirmed that only two survived. The staff pulled the two members to safety. Health officials said they know and are not in a life-threatening condition.
Family members wept as officials announced the names of some of the dead at the Muan airport lounge.
Footage of the crash broadcast by YTN television showed the plane skidding off the runway, its landing gear apparently still closed, and crashing head-on into a concrete wall at the edge of the facility.
Local television stations broadcast images showing the plane engulfed in flames, with thick pillows of black smoke billowing out. The NFA deployed 32 fire trucks and several helicopters to fight the fire. About 1,560 firefighters, police, soldiers and other officials have also been sent to the area, the agency said.
Emergency services in Muan said they were investigating the cause of the fire, and initially said the landing gear of the plane appeared to be malfunctioning.
Possible bird strikes
John Cox, president of aviation consulting firm Safety Operating Systems LLC, based in Washington, DC, said the video shows the plane may have hit one or both engines, but investigators will know more once they read the plane’s black boxes. search engines for bird droppings.
UK aviation expert Philip Butterworth-Hayes told Agence France-Presse that a strike on both engines would cause the plane to lose power, and the pilots would have to activate the APU, or auxiliary power unit, to restore power and regain control. . such as landing gear.
“It’s possible that they didn’t have time to lower the landing gear in auxiliary ways due to having limited or no power from the engines,” Cox told CBC News.
He said the plane initially appeared to be out of control on the runway and moving slowly, “and it would have stopped if that wall wasn’t there.”
Cox said that under international standards, airports must have a clear area at the end of the runway so that “if the plane is moving, it doesn’t hit something.”
“Airplane engines are designed to withstand a lot, including bird strikes,” Butterworth-Hayes he told AFP. “But if the birds are too big, they become flocks and there are so many of them, even a modern jet engine has problems with it.”
Lee Jeong-hyeon, chief of the Muan fire station, told a television news conference that the plane was completely destroyed, leaving the tail assembly in the wreckage. Lee said crews were looking into what caused the crash, including whether the plane was struck by birds.
Transport Ministry chief executive Joo Jong-wan said workers have retrieved flight data and cockpit voice recorders from the plane’s black box, which will be examined by government experts investigating the cause of the crash and fire. Joo said the runway at Muan Airport will be closed until Jan. 1.
The ministry said the plane was a 15-year-old Boeing 737-800 that was returning from Bangkok when the accident happened at 9:03 am local time, and its passengers included two Thai nationals.
The prime minister of Thailand, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, expressed his condolences to the families of those affected by the accident in a text he wrote on social media platform X, which was Twitter. Paetongtarn said he has ordered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to provide immediate assistance.
Low cost airline
In a televised news conference, Kim E-bae, president of Jeju Air, bowed deeply along with other top company officials as he apologized to the bereaved families and said he felt “full responsibility” for the incident.
It was the first plane to kill Jeju Air, a low-cost airline founded in 2005 that ranks behind Korea Air Lines and Asiana Airlines in terms of passenger numbers in South Korea.
Kim said the company had not identified any problems with the plane following the inspection and said he would wait for the results of the government’s investigation into the cause of the accident.
Boeing said in a statement to X that it has been in contact with Jeju Air and is ready to support the company in dealing with this accident. “We offer our condolences to the families who lost their loved ones, and our thoughts are with the passengers and crew,” Boeing said.
It is one of the deadliest disasters in South Korean aviation history. The last time South Korea suffered a major aviation disaster was in 1997, when a Korean Airline plane crashed in Guam, killing 228 people.
In an emergency meeting on Sunday evening, South Korea’s acting president, Choi Sang-mok, announced a period of national mourning until Jan. 4.
The incident occurred at a time when South Korea was facing a major political crisis caused by the imposition of martial law and the impeachment of then-president Yoon Suk Yeol.
On Friday, South Korean lawmakers reinstated acting president Han Duck-soo and suspended him, forcing President Choi to take over. He ordered officials to use all available resources to rescue passengers and crew, according to Yonhap news agency.
Source link