SEOUL: As many as 179 passengers were killed when a plane skidded off the runway and burst into flames after hitting a concrete fence at South Korea’s Muan International Airport, 290 km south of Seoul, on Sunday.
Only two of the 181 passengers on board Jeju Air flight 7C2216 survived the crash one of the worst in country’s aviation history. The landing gear of the 15-year-old Boeing 737-800 aircraft apparently failed to deploy as it arrived from Bangkok.
The plane was carrying 175 passengers and six crew. Among the dead were 85 women, 84 men and 10 others whose gender wasn’t immediately identifiable, its fire agency said. Emergency workers pulled out two people, both crew, to safety. Health officials said they were conscious and not in a life-threatening condition.
Among the 177 bodies found so far, the officials had identified 88, the agency said. The passengers were predominantly of South Korean origin, besides two Thai nationals.
The fire agency deployed 32 fire trucks and several helicopters to contain the blaze. Nearly 1,500 firefighters, police officers, soldiers and other officials were rushed to the site, the fire agency and transport ministry said. Footage of the crash showed the plane skidding across the airstrip at high speed, apparently with its landing gear still closed, overrunning the runway and colliding head-on with a concrete wall on the outskirts of the facility.