Jeju Air flight crashes in South Korea

At least 179 people were killed when an airliner veered off the runway and erupted into a fireball as it slammed into a wall at South Korea’s Muan International Airport on Sunday, according to Yonhap news agency and other media reports. Two people were pulled alive from the crash. The crash occurred as Jeju Air flight 7C2216, carrying 175 passengers and six crew on a flight from the Thai capital Bangkok, was landing shortly after 9 a.m. (0000 GMT) at the airport in the south of the country, South Korea’s transport ministry said. The aircraft veered off a runway and crashed into a wall at Muan International Airport in the southwest of the country, according to Yonhap. The Jeju Air plane, which was carrying 175 passengers and six flight attendants, was reportedly flying back from Bangkok in Thailand and the accident took place while it was landing. Two people were found alive and rescue operations were still under way, a fire official told the Reuters news agency. Both local fire officials and aviation experts say some sort of landing gear malfunction was likely. Lee Jeong-hyun, the head of the Muan Fire Department, also briefed the media saying that the cause was “estimated to be the occurrence of a bird strike or bad weather.” The plane’s pilot made a mayday call to the control tower about a minute after acceding to controllers’ request to change landing runways to avoid a possible bird strike risk, according to a briefing from the Land Ministry. The plane hit navigation equipment on the ground before crashing into a wall, according to media reports. The flight data recording black box has been recovered by the accident investigation committee but the voice recording device has not been recovered yet, officials said. For Editorial Inquiries Contact: Editor Matt Driskill at [email protected] For Advertising Inquiries Contact: Head of Sales Kay Rolland at [email protected]