MUAN, South Korea — The death toll from a passenger plane crash in southern South Korea rose to 179 on Sunday, after the aircraft skidded off the runway, slammed into a concrete barrier, and burst into flames. Only two of the 181 people on board survived, making it one of the country’s deadliest aviation disasters.
The Jeju Air flight, a 15-year-old Boeing 737-800 jet arriving from Bangkok, crashed while attempting to land at Muan International Airport, about 180 miles south of Seoul. The crash occurred at 9:03 a.m. after the plane’s front landing gear apparently failed to deploy, according to South Korea’s Transport Ministry.
The South Korean fire agency reported that the fatalities included 85 women, 84 men, and 10 others whose genders were not immediately identifiable. Two crew members were pulled from the wreckage alive and are in stable condition, health officials said.
The passengers were mostly South Korean, along with two Thai nationals, according to Thailand’s Foreign Ministry, which confirmed their deaths. Officials have so far identified 88 of the 177 recovered bodies.
Emergency teams mobilized swiftly to contain the disaster, deploying 32 fire trucks, helicopters, and nearly 1,600 personnel, including firefighters, police officers, and soldiers, to extinguish the flames and search for survivors, officials said.
Television footage showed the plane careening down the airstrip at high speed, with its landing gear still retracted, before it overran the runway and slammed into a concrete wall. The impact triggered an explosion, engulfing the aircraft in thick black smoke and flames.
“The plane is completely destroyed,” Lee Jeong-hyeon, chief of the Muan fire station, said during a televised briefing. “Only the tail assembly remains recognizable among the wreckage.”
Investigators are examining several possible causes of the crash, including whether a bird strike may have played a role, Lee said.
Sunday’s crash marks one of the worst aviation accidents in South Korea’s history and has prompted an outpouring of grief and calls for a thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding the tragedy.
