A Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 flying from Bangkok, Thailand, carrying 181 people, 175 engers and 6 crew , overshot the runway and crashed at Muan International Airport in southwestern South Korea.
Footage of Sunday's crash broadcast by several South Korean media outlets showed the plane sliding on its belly at high speed, hitting an earthen embankment and exploding in a ball of fire.
A malfunction of the landing gear is believed to have caused the accident. Firefighters also suspect a bird strike. But none of this makes sense since the landing gear has a manual gravity-operated mechanism, even if the hydraulic or electrical systems fail. Only investigations will shed light on the accident.
The local fire department confirmed that at least 179 people died, two crew were rescued alive from the wreckage and taken to hospital.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Land Transport said it had recovered the flight and voice recorders from the wreckage, which will help in the investigation into what caused the crash. One of the two recovered black boxes suffered partial damage, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.
The damage will likely delay analysis to identify the cause of the crash, ministry officials said. “Decoding the FDR alone could take about a month,” the official added.
“If we have trouble decoding it here, then we may have to send it to the NTSB,” the second official said. “They have cases from all over the world to look at, so it could take a while.”
Jeju Air declined to comment on the cause of the crash during news conferences, saying an investigation is ongoing. Under global aviation rules, South Korea will lead a civil investigation into the crash and automatically involve the National Transportation Safety Board in the United States, where the plane was designed and built.
In a statement, Boeing said: “We are in with Jeju Air regarding Flight 2216 and stand ready to them. We extend our deepest condolences to the families who lost loved ones, and our thoughts remain with the engers and crew.”
