Ammon News -

At least 167 people were killed when an Jeju Air plane belly-landed and veered off the runway, erupting in a fireball as it slammed into a wall at South Korea's Muan International Airport on Sunday, the national fire agency said.

Jeju Air (089590.KS), opens new tab flight 7C2216, arriving from the Thai capital Bangkok with 175 passengers and six crew on board, was attempting to land shortly after 9 a.m. (0000 GMT) at the airport in the south of the country, South Korea's transport ministry said.

 

The ministry also confirmed the casualties in the deadliest air accident involving a South Korean airline in nearly three decades.

The two crew were being treated at hospitals with medium to severe injuries, said the head of the local public health centre.
Yonhap news agency cited a fire official as saying most of 175 passengers and six crew were presumed dead.

At least 58 bodies have been recovered but that number is not final, another fire official told Reuters.

Authorities had worked to rescue people in the tail section, an airport official told Reuters shortly after the crash.

The crash is the worst by any South Korean airline since a 1997 Korean Air crash in Guam that killed more than 200 people, according to transportation ministry data.

Investigators are looking into bird strikes and weather conditions as possible factors, Lee said. Yonhap cited airport authorities as saying a bird strike may have caused the landing gear to malfunction.

The passengers included two Thai nationals and the rest are believed to be South Koreans, according to the transportation ministry.

The plane was a Boeing 737-800 jet operated by Jeju Air, which was seeking details of the accident, including its casualties and cause, an airline spokesperson said. The transport ministry said the plane was manufactured in 2009.

Jeju Air posted a message apologising for the accident.

Reuters