Almost 180 people died after a the plane crashed while landing in South Korea on Sunday, December 29 in the morning.
Shocking video shows a Jeju Air plane coming off the runway before crashing into a barrier and bursting into flames at Muan International Airport.
There were 181 people on the plane returning from Bangkok, Thailand, 179 of whom died. Two crew members were rescued from the wreckage.
The authorities are investigating the cause of the accident, and firefighters point to a bird strike and bad weather. However, experts warn that several factors could have caused the accident.
What happened?
Flight 7C2216 was a Boeing 737-800 operated by Jeju Air, Korea’s most popular budget airline.
Air traffic control cleared the plane to land at Muan International Airport at around 08:54 (23:54 GMT) – just three minutes before a bird activity alert was issued in the area.
At 08:59 the pilot reported that the aircraft had struck a bird, announcing “mayday mayday mayday” and “bird strike, bird strike, go-round”. The pilot then aborted the initial landing and requested permission to land from the opposite direction.
Air traffic control cleared an alternate landing at 09:01 – and at 09:02 the plane made contact with the ground, descending approximately halfway down the 2,800 meter runway.
One video appears to show the plane touching the ground without using wheels or any other landing gear. It skidded down the runway, flew over it and crashed into a wall before bursting into flames.
A witness told South Korea’s Yonhap news agency that they heard a “loud bang” followed by “a series of explosions”.
Footage from the scene shows the plane burning and smoke rising into the sky. Fire crews later extinguished the fire.
The first of the two survivors was rescued from the accident around 09:23, while the second was rescued from inside the tail section of the aircraft around 09:50.
Could a bird strike have contributed to the accident?
Lee Jeong-hyun, chief of the Muan Fire Department, said in a televised briefing that bird strikes and bad weather may have caused the accident – but that the exact cause was still under investigation.
The flight and the recorder from the plane have been recovered, although Yonhap reports that the former was damaged.
An investigator told the news agency that decoding the black boxes could take up to a month.
One passenger on the flight texted relatives, saying the bird was “stuck in the wing” and the plane could not land, local media reported.
Officials, however, have not confirmed whether the plane actually collided with any of the birds.
Jeju Air’s chief executive said the crash was not due to “any maintenance issues,” Yonhap reported.
South Korea’s Department of Transportation said the flight’s chief pilot had held the role since 2019 and had more than 6,800 hours of flight experience.
Geoffrey Thomas, an aviation expert and editor of Airline News, told the BBC that South Korea and its airlines are considered “best practice in the industry” and that both the plane and the airline have an “excellent safety record”.
Mr Thomas separately told the Reuters news agency that he was skeptical that the bird strike alone could have caused the accident.
“Bird strikes are not uncommon. Undercarriage problems are not uncommon. Bird strikes happen much more often, but they usually don’t cause the loss of the aircraft in and of themselves,” he said.
Who are the victims and survivors of plane crashes?
There were 175 passengers and six crew members on board. Two of the passengers were Thai, and the others were believed to be South Korean, authorities said. Many are believed to have been returning from Christmas holidays in Thailand.
The official death toll is 179 – making this the deadliest plane crash on South Korean soil.
All passengers and four crew members were killed.
Authorities have so far identified 174 bodies and are still checking the remaining five “due to DNA inconsistencies,” according to Yonhap.
Officials collected saliva samples from family members gathered at Muan Airport to help identify the victims’ bodies. The other victims were identified by their fingerprints.
Five people who died were children under 10 years old. The youngest passenger was a three-year-old boy, and the oldest was 78, authorities said, citing the passenger manifest.
“I can’t believe the whole family just disappeared,” Maeng Gi-Su, 78, whose nephew and great-nephews were on the flight, told the BBC. – My heart hurts a lot.
South Korea’s National Fire Agency said two crew members – a man and a woman – survived the crash.
The man has woken up and is “fully able to communicate,” Yonhap said, citing the director of the Seoul hospital where he is being treated.
More than 1,500 emergency personnel have been deployed as part of the recovery effort, including 490 firefighters and 455 police officers. They are searching the area around the runway for parts of the plane and those who were on it.
What are the officials doing now?
Acting President Choi Sang-mok ordered an immediate safety inspection of the country’s entire airline business.
Muan has also been declared a special disaster zone, making central government funds available to the local government and victims.
All flights to and from Muan International Airport have been cancelled.
A seven-day national mourning period has been declared, and the country’s New Year celebrations are likely to be canceled or scaled back.
Aircraft manufacturer Boeing said it was in contact with Jeju Air and was “ready to support them”.
Jeju Air apologized to the families, and its CEO said at a press conference that the airline had no history of accidents. Sunday’s crash is believed to be the airline’s only fatal accident since it was launched in 2005.
What is a bird strike?
A bird strike is a collision between an airplane in flight and a bird. They are very common – there were more than 1,400 bird strikes in the UK in 2022, with only around 100 involving aircraft, according to data from the Civil Aviation Administration.
The most famous flight of birds happened in 2009, when an An Airbus plane made an emergency landing on the Hudson River in New York after a collision with a flock of geese. All 155 passengers and crew survived.
Professor Doug Drury, who teaches aviation at CQUniversity Australia, wrote in an article for Conversation this summer that Boeing planes – like Airbus and Embraer – had turbofan engines, which could be seriously damaged in a bird strike.
He said pilots are trained to be extra careful early in the morning or at sunset, when the birds are most active.
But some aviation experts are skeptical that a bird strike could have caused the crash at Muan Airport.
“Usually they do [bird strikes] don’t cause the loss of the aircraft yourself,” Mr Thomas told Reuters.
Australian airline safety expert Geoffrey Dell also told the news agency: “I’ve never seen a bird strike prevent the landing gear from being retracted.”
