Ju-min Park and Hongji Kim
MUAN DISTRICT, South Korea (Reuters) – South Korea’s Acting President Choi Sang-mok on Monday ordered an emergency safety inspection of the country’s entire operational air transport system as investigators work to identify victims and find the cause of the country’s deadliest air disaster.
The crash on Sunday killed 179 people when a Jeju Air jet landed on its belly and skidded off the end of the runway, erupting in a fireball when it hit a wall at Muan International Airport. Two crew members were pulled out alive.
The top priority for now is identifying the victims, supporting their families and treating the two survivors, Choi said at a disaster management meeting in Seoul.
“Even before the final results are released, we request officials to transparently release the accident investigation process and immediately notify the bereaved families,” he said.
“As soon as the accident recovery is carried out, the Ministry of Transport is requested to conduct an urgent safety inspection of the entire operational system of the aircraft to prevent the recurrence of aviation accidents,” he said.
Jeju Air flight 7C2216, coming from the Thai capital of Bangkok with 175 passengers and six crew members, was attempting to land shortly after 9 a.m. (0000 GMT) on Sunday at the airport in the south of the country.
Investigators are looking into bird strikes and weather conditions as possible factors in the crash, fire officials said. Experts say many questions remain, including why the twin-engine Boeing (NYSE: ) 737-800 appeared to be traveling so fast and why its landing gear did not appear to be down when it slid down the runway and hit a wall.
Most of the local residents who were returning from a holiday in Thailand were killed in the accident, and two Thai citizens were also killed.
On Monday morning, investigators were trying to identify some of the last remaining victims as anxious families waited inside the Muan airport terminal.
Park Han-shin, who lost his brother in the crash, said authorities told him his brother had been identified, but he could not see his body.
The park called on the families of other victims to unite in disaster response and recovery efforts, citing the 2014 ferry sinking that killed more than 300 people. The disaster was followed by protracted efforts to identify the victims and the cause of the sinking.
Emergency workers were searching the wreckage, which was almost completely destroyed when the plane was engulfed in an explosion of flames and debris at a regional airport near the country’s winding west coast.
Transport ministry officials said the plane’s flight data recorder had been recovered, but that it appeared to have suffered some external damage and it was not yet clear whether the data was intact enough to be analyzed.
Muan Airport remains closed until Wednesday, but the country’s other international and regional airports, including the main Incheon International Airport, are operating as scheduled.
Shares of South Korean low-cost carrier Jeju Air fell to a record low on Monday, trading down as much as 15.7%.
Under global aviation rules, South Korea will conduct a civil investigation into the crash and automatically involve the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in the United States, where the plane was designed and built.
The NTSB said it is leading a team of US investigators to assist South Korean aviation authorities. Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration also participated.
Choi, who oversaw the recovery and investigation efforts, became acting leader just three days ago after the country’s president and prime minister were impeached for imposing a short-lived martial law.
