MUAN COUNTY, South Korea (Reuters) – South Korea’s acting President Choi Sang-mok said on Monday that the country’s airlines had been suspended as investigators worked to identify victims and determine the cause of the country’s deadliest aviation accident. An emergency safety inspection of the entire system was ordered.
A Jeju Air Boeing (NYSE:) 737-800 made a belly-landing off the end of the runway at Muan International Airport, skidded and crashed into a wall, causing a fireball and killing all 175 passengers and six crew members on board. Four people died. Two crew members were pulled out alive.
Choi told a disaster response conference in Seoul that his top priorities now are identifying the victims, supporting their families and treating the two survivors.
“We call on the authorities to transparently disclose the accident investigation process and promptly inform the families of the victims, even before the final results are released,” he said.
“I request the Ministry of Transport to immediately conduct an emergency safety inspection of the entire aircraft operation system to prevent a recurrence of an aircraft accident once the accident is resolved,” he said.
The Ministry of Transportation said authorities are considering whether to conduct special inspections on all 101 Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by Korean Air.
Jeju Air Flight 7C2216, which arrived from Thailand’s capital Bangkok with 175 passengers and six crew members on board, was about to land at an airport in southern Thailand just after 9 a.m. (midnight Japan time) on Sunday.
Fire officials said investigators are looking into bird strike and weather conditions as possible factors in the crash. Experts wonder why the plane, powered by two CFM 56-7B26 engines, appeared to be flying so fast, and whether its landing gear was down as it skidded off the runway and hit a wall. He said many questions remain, including why there didn’t seem to be any.
CFM International is a French joint venture with GE Aerospace. saffron (EPA:).
On Monday, Department of Transportation officials said the pilots were on their scheduled approach when they informed air traffic control that the plane had been hit by a bird strike, shortly after receiving a warning from the control tower that a bird had been sighted in the area. did.
The pilots then declared a mayday and signaled their intent to evade the aircraft just before it made a belly landing on the runway and struck a structure at the end of the runway.
Department of Transportation officials said at a press conference that they are investigating what role the localizer antenna, which was installed at the end of the runway to assist in landing, and the embankment it was installed on, played in the crash. he said at a press conference.
The accident killed most of the local residents who had returned from a holiday in Thailand, as well as two Thai nationals.
Anguished family members waited inside the Muan airport terminal on Monday morning as investigators tried to identify some of the last remaining victims.
Park Han-shin, whose younger brother died in the accident, said authorities had confirmed his brother’s identity but told him they had not been able to see his body.
President 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. This disaster was followed by a long-term effort to identify the victims and the cause of the sinking.
Emergency workers were combing through the nearly completely destroyed wreckage of a plane engulfed in flames and debris at a local airport near the winding west coast.
Department of Transportation officials said the plane’s flight data recorder had been recovered, but it appeared to have external damage and it was not yet clear whether the data was damaged enough to be analyzed.
Muan Airport remained closed until Wednesday, but the rest of the country’s international and regional airports, including the main Incheon International Airport, were operating as scheduled.
Jeju Air’s stock price hit an all-time low on Monday, dropping as much as 15.7%.
Under global aviation regulations, South Korea will lead the civil investigation into the crash, and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in the United States, where the plane was designed and manufactured, will also automatically be involved.
The NTSB said it was leading a U.S. investigation team to assist South Korean aviation authorities. Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration also participated.
Choi, who was overseeing reconstruction efforts and investigations, was appointed acting leader just three days ago after the president and prime minister were impeached for briefly imposing martial law.
(This story has been refiled to add omitted word in paragraph 12)
