A South Korean passenger plane skidded off the runway and into a perimeter wall at Muan airport, some 290 kilometres south of Seoul, taking the lives of at least 124 passengers.
It has been reported that the landing gear failed to deploy as the plane was landing on a return flight from Bangkok at 9.03am local time on Sunday, December 29.
To date, this has been the country’s worst aviation disaster. Rescue workers raced to the scene of the burning 15-year-old Boeing, but it appears that at least 124 of the 181 people on board perished in the ensuing blaze. The death toll is expected to rise further as many of the people aboard the plane remained missing six hours after the incident.
2 rescued from South Korean plane wreck
Fire crews managed to pull out at least 2 flight crew members who remained conscious to safety. The entire rescue mission involved 32 fire trucks, around 1,500 firefighters, police officers, and other officials, as well as several helicopters carrying water to douse the flames.
News footage of the catastrophe shows the Jeju Air plane touch down without its landing gear open, then slide across the runway and into the perimeter concrete wall. Other local TV stations aired footage showing thick plumes of black smoke billowing from the plane, which was engulfed in flames.
