South Korea to inspect Boeing aircraft as it struggles to find cause of plane crash that killed 179
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean officials said Monday they will conduct safety inspections of all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by the country’s airlines, as they struggle to determine what caused a plane crash that killed 179 people a day earlier.
Sunday’s crash, the country’s worst aviation disaster in decades, triggered an outpouring of national sympathy. Many people worry how effectively the South Korean government will handle the disaster as it grapples with a leadership vacuum following the recent successive impeachments of President Yoon Suk Yeol and Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, the country’s top two officials, amid political tumult caused by Yoon’s brief imposition of martial law earlier this month.
New acting President Choi Sang-mok on Monday presided over a task force meeting on the crash and instructed authorities to conduct an emergency review of the country’s aircraft operation systems.
“The essence of a responsible response would be renovating the aviation safety systems on the whole to prevent recurrences of similar incidents and building a safer Republic of South Korea,” said Choi, who is also deputy prime minister and finance minister.
The Boeing 737-800 plane operated by South Korean budget airline Jeju Air aborted its first landing attempt for reasons that aren’t immediately clear. Then, during its second landing attempt, it received a bird strike warning from the ground control center before its pilot issued a distress signal. The plane landed without its front landing gear deployed, overshot the runway, slammed into a concrete fence and burst into a fireball.
Alan Price, a former chief pilot at Delta Air Lines and now a consultant, said the Boeing 737-800 is a “proven airplane” that belongs to a different class of aircraft than the Boeing 737 Max jetliner that was linked to fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019.
But South Korea’s Transport Ministry said Monday it plans to conduct safety inspections of all of the 101 Boeing 737-800 jetliners operated by the country’s airlines as well as a broader review into safety standards at Jeju Air, which operates 39 of those planes. Senior ministry official Joo Jong-wan said representatives from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and Boeing were expected to arrive in South Korea on Monday to participate in the investigation.
Ministry officials also said they will look into whether the Muan airport’s localizer — a concrete fence housing a set of antennas designed to guide aircraft safely during landings — should have been made with lighter materials that would break more easily upon impact.
Joo said the ministry has determined that similar concrete structures are in other domestic airports, including in Jeju Island and the southern cities of Yeosu and Pohang, as well as airports in the United States, Spain and South Africa.
Video of the crash indicated that the pilots did not deploy flaps or slats to slow the aircraft, suggesting a possible hydraulic failure, and did not manually lower the landing gear, suggesting they did not have time, said John Cox, a retired airline pilot and CEO of Safety Operating Systems in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Despite that, the jetliner was under control and traveling in a straight line, and damage and injuries likely would have been minimized if not for the barrier being so close to the runway, Cox said.
Other observers said the videos showed the plane was suffering from suspected engine trouble but the landing gear malfunction was likely a direct reason for the crash. They said there wouldn’t likely be a link between the landing gear problem and the suspected engine issue.
Earlier Monday, another Boeing 737-800 plane operated by Jeju Air returned to Seoul’s Gimpo International Airport shortly after takeoff when the pilot detected a landing gear issue. Song Kyung-hoon, a Jeju Air executive, said the issue was resolved through communication with a land-based equipment center, but the pilot decided to return to Gimpo as a precautionary measure.
Joo said officials were reviewing whether there might have been communication problems between air traffic controllers and the pilot. “Our current understanding is that, at some point during the go-around process, communication became somewhat ineffective or was interrupted, ahead of the landing and impact,” he said.
Ministry officials said Monday the plane’s flight data and cockpit audio recorders were moved to a research center at Gimpo airport ahead of their analysis. Ministry officials earlier said it would take months to complete the investigation of the crash.
The Muan crash is South Korea’s deadliest aviation disaster since 1997, when a Korean Airlines plane crashed in Guam, killing 228 people on board.
The crash left many South Koreans shocked and ashamed, with the government announcing a seven-day national mourning period through Jan. 4. Some questioned whether the crash involved safety or regulatory issues, such as a 2022 Halloween crush in Seoul that killed 160 people and a 2014 ferry sinking that killed 304 people.
The Transport Ministry said authorities have identified 146 bodies and are collecting DNA and fingerprint samples from the other 33.
Park Han Shin, a representative of the bereaved families, said they were told that the bodies were so badly damaged that officials need time before returning them to their families.
“I demand that the government mobilize more personnel to return our brothers and family members as intact as possible more swiftly,” he said, choking down tears.
The crash was yet more major news for South Koreans already reeling from a political crisis set off by Yoon’s martial law decree, which brought hundreds of troops into Seoul streets and revived traumatic memories of past military rule in the 1970-80s.
The political tumult resulted in the opposition-controlled National Assembly impeaching Yoon and Han. The safety minister stepped down and the police chief was arrested over their roles in the martial law inforcement.
The absence of top officials responsible for managing disasters has led to concerns.
“We are deeply worried whether the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters really can handle the disaster,” the mass-circulation JoongAng Ilbo newspaper said in an editorial Monday.
What we know about the South Korea plane crash so far
More than 170 people have died after a plane crashed as it was landing in South Korea on Sunday morning.
Harrowing video footage shows the Jeju Air plane coming off the runway before colliding with a barrier and bursting into flames at Muan International Airport.
The plane, which was returning from Bangkok, in Thailand, was carrying 181 people - 179 of whom have died, while two crew members were rescued from the wreckage.
Authorities are investigating the cause of the crash, which fire officials have indicated may have occurred due to a bird strike and bad weather. However experts have warned the crash could have been caused by a number of factors.
The flight, 7C2216, was a Boeing 737-800 operated by Jeju Air, Korea's most popular budget airline.
Air traffic control authorised the plane to land at Muan International Airport at about 08:54 local time on Sunday (23:54 GMT) - just three minutes before issuing a warning about bird activity in the area.
At 08:59, the pilot reported that the plane had struck a bird, declaring "mayday mayday mayday" and "bird strike, bird strike, go-around". The pilot then aborted the original landing and requested permission to land from the opposite direction.
Air traffic control authorised the alternative landing at 09:01 - and at 09:02 the plane made contact with the ground, coming down at roughly the halfway point of the 2,800m runway.
One video appears to show the plane touching down without using its wheels or any other landing gear. It skidded down the runway, overshot it and crashed into a wall, before erupting into flames.
A witness told the South Korean news agency Yonhap that they heard a "loud bang" followed by a "series of explosions".
Videos from the scene show the plane ablaze with smoke billowing into the sky. Fire crews later extinguished the fire.
The first of two survivors was rescued from the crash at about 09:23, with the second being rescued from inside the tail section of the plane at about 09:50.
Lee Jeong-hyun, the chief of the Muan fire department, told a televised briefing that the bird strike and bad weather may have caused the crash - but that the exact cause is still being investigated.
The flight and voice recorders from the plane have been recovered, though the Yonhap news agency reported that the former was damaged.
An investigator told the news agency that the black boxes could take up to a month to decode.
One passenger on the flight messaged a relative, saying that a bird "was stuck in the wing" and that the plane could not land, local media reported.
Officials, however, have not confirmed whether the plane did actually collide with any birds.
The head of Jeju Air's management said that the crash was not due to "any maintenance issues", Yonhap reported.
The South Korean transport department said that the head pilot on the flight had held the role since 2019 and had more than 6,800 hours of flight experience.
Geoffrey Thomas, an aviation expert and editor of Airline News, told the BBC that South Korea and its airlines were considered "industry best practice" and that both the aircraft and the airline have an "excellent safety record".
Mr Thomas separately told the Reuters news agency that he was sceptical that a bird strike alone could have caused the crash.
"A bird strike is not unusual. Problems with an undercarriage are not unusual. Bird strikes happen far more often, but typically they don't cause the loss of an airplane by themselves," he said.
The plane was carrying 175 passengers and six crew. Two of the passengers were Thai and the rest are believed to have been South Korean, authorities have said. Many are thought to have been returning from a Christmas holiday in Thailand.
The official death toll stands at 179 - making it the deadliest plane crash on South Korean soil.
All the passengers and four members of crew died.
Officials have been collecting saliva samples from family members gathered at Muan Airport to help identify bodies of victims. Other victims have been identified by their fingerprints.
Authorities have so far identified 141 bodies.
Five of the people who died were children under the age of 10. The youngest passenger was a three-year-old boy and the oldest was 78, authorities said, citing the passenger manifest.
"I can't believe the entire family has just disappeared," Maeng Gi-Su, 78, whose nephew and grand-nephews were on the flight, told the BBC. "My heart aches so much."
South Korea's National Fire Agency said two members of flight crew - a man and a woman - survived the crash. They were found in the tail of the aircraft after the crash and taken to hospital, it said.
The man has woken up and is "fully able to communicate," according to Yonhap, which cites the director of the Seoul hospital where he is being treated.
More than 1,500 emergency personnel have been deployed as part of recovery efforts, including 490 fire employees and 455 police officers. They have been searching the area around the runway for parts of the plane and those who were onboard.
Acting President Choi Sang-mok has has ordered an emergency safety inspection of the country's entire airline operations.
Muan has also been declared a special disaster zone, which makes central government funding available to the local government and victims.
All flights to and from Muan International Airport have been cancelled.
A national seven-day period of mourning has been declared, and New Year's Day celebrations in the country are likely to be cancelled or scaled down.
Aircraft maker Boeing has said it is in touch with Jeju Air and stands "ready to support them".
Jeju Air has apologised to families, with its chief executive saying in a news conference that the airline had no history of accidents. It is believed that Sunday's crash has been the airline's only fatal accident since it was launched in 2005.
A bird strike is a collision between a plane in flight and a bird. They are very common - in the UK, there were more than 1,400 bird strikes reported in 2022, only about 100 of which affected the plane, according to data from the Civil Aviation Authority.
The best known bird strike occurred in 2009, when an Airbus plane made an emergency landing on New York's Hudson River after colliding with a flock of geese. All 155 passengers and crew survived.
Professor Doug Drury, who teaches aviation at CQUniversity Australia, wrote in an article for The Conversation this summer that Boeing planes - like Airbus and Embraer - have turbofan engines, which can be severely damaged in a bird strike.
He said that pilots are trained to be especially vigilant during the early morning or at sunset, when birds are most active.
But some aviation experts are sceptical about whether a bird strike could have caused the crash at Muan Airport.
"Typically they [bird strikes] don't cause the loss of an airplane by themselves," Mr Thomas told Reuters.
Australian airline safety expert Geoffrey Dell also told the news agency: "I've never seen a bird strike prevent the landing gear from being extended."
What we know about the South Korea plane crash that killed 179 people
A major investigation was underway Monday after 179 people werekilled in one of South Korea's deadliest plane crashesever when an airliner belly-landed at Muan International Airport on Sunday before skidding into a wall and bursting into flames.
Questions remain around exactly what caused Jeju Air Flight 2216 to crash — and why the death toll was so high, with just two survivors.
Hundreds of family members camped out overnight at the international airport, desperate for answers about what happened to their loved ones and demanding to be able to see their remains.
Here's what we know so far about the deadly crash and the investigation into what caused it:
Jeju Air Flight 2216 took off from Bangkok shortly after 2 a.m. local time (2 p.m. ET Saturday), according to the flight-tracking platform FlightAware.
Around 8:59 a.m. (6:59 pm ET Saturday), the pilot of the Boeing 737-800 plane issued a "bird strike" warning used to alert a collision between at least one bird and an aircraft, before declaring"mayday," Yu Kyung-soo, director of aviation safety policy at South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, or MOLIT, said in a briefing Monday.
“The aircraft then performed a go-around, and at 9:01 a.m., it was cleared to enter Runway 19," Yu said. Just a minute later, the plane touched down at the one-third point, or almost 4,000 feet, of the runway, he said. But after about one minute, it veered off the runway and collided with a wall, Yu said.
The incident unfolded just minutes after the control tower at the airport had issued a bird activity warning at 8:57 a.m., Yu added.
In video captured of the crash, the plane could be seen belly-landing at Muan International Airport and skidding down the runway before crashing into a wall and erupting in flames. Video appeared to show that part or all of the aircraft's landing gear did not deploy.
South Korea’s national fire agency confirmed that 179 people were killed in the crash, making it the deadliest airline disaster of the year and what appeared to be Jeju Air’s first fatal accident since the low-cost airline was founded in 2005.
There is still no definitive answer on what exactly caused the crash.
The National Transportation Safety Board is expected to dispatch a U.S. investigation team to assist with the probe, with consultations also ongoing with Boeing, the aircraft manufacturer, and CFM International, a joint venture between the United States and France that manufactured the plane's engine, officials said at a briefing Monday.
Two black boxes retrieved from the aircraft — the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder — were transferred to a test center Monday morning.
Investigators are looking into whether a flock or a single bird was responsible for the plane’s apparent loss of control.
It also unclear why the plane's landing gear did not appear to deploy. Earlier Monday, a different Boeing 737-800 plane operated by Jeju Air had to return to Seoul’s Gimpo International Airport not long after takeoff after the pilot detected a landing gear issue.
Song Kyung-hoon, a Jeju Air executive, said the issue had been resolved during the flight, but that the pilot still returned to Gimpo as a precautionary measure, The Associated Press reported.
Another aspect of the crash that investigators will be looking into is the fact that the plane crashed into the exterior wall of an azimuth, or localizer, facility, Joo Jong-wan, director of the aviation policy office at MOLIT, said at a briefing Monday.
"The azimuth facility cannot be arbitrarily installed; there are installation regulations, which we are currently reviewing," Joo said.
Investigators will also be looking into whether the localizer, which includes a concrete fence surrounding a set of antennas designed to help guide aircraft during landings, should have been made with materials that would have broken more easily upon impact, AP reported.
A total of 181 passengers, including young children, and crew members were onboard when the plane crashed.
Most of the passengers are believed to have been Korean, but at least two of were Thai, Joo said.
At least 84 of the dead were women and 82 were men, officials said.
At least 11 of those killed were school students, South Korea's Education Ministry said Monday. At least four were enrolled in elementary school, three in middle school and four in high school.
"One victim was identified as a preschool child born in 2021 and attending daycare," ministry spokesperson Gu Yeon-hee said.
Grieving family members of those killed in the crash have gathered at Muan airport demanding answers and to see the bodies of their loved ones.
The families have formed a group led by Park Han-shin, who lost his brother in the crash.
On Monday, Park issued a number of demands on behalf of the families, including that Jeju Air cover the costs of funeral services for those killed and that a memorial be set up for the victims inside the airport.
The Seoul city government said Monday that it will set up a joint memorial altar for the victims and minimize or cancel year-end events during the national mourning period.
Park also said that more freezer containers were needed at the airport to preserve crash victims. A lack of storage for bodies is a growing concern among the grieving families.
Finally, Park said, the families would need answers on what exactly happened to their loved ones, as well as compensation for their loss.
"You need to clearly establish what went wrong, why it went wrong, and allocate appropriate compensation and procedures accordingly," he said.
Two people, a man and a woman who were both flight crew members, survived Sunday's crash. Both suffered moderate injuries, but were conscious, Joo said.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency identified one of the survivors as a 33-year-old flight attendant who suffered multiple injuries, including fractured ribs and traumatic spinal injuries, according to Ju Woong, director of Ewha Woman’s University Seoul Hospital.
“When I woke up, I had already been rescued,” said the flight attendant, identified only by his last name, Lee, according to Ju. They were in intensive care but able to communicate well.
“There’s no indication yet of memory loss or such,” Ju said.
Officials have already announced plans for new safety measures.
A special investigation of the Boeing B737-800 aircraft model would be launched, MOLIT said Monday.
The aircraft model is widely used by domestic low-cost carriers, with Jeju Air operating the largest number at 39 planes. Other operators include T’way Air, Jin Air, Eastar Jet, Air Incheon and Korean Air.
“We will examine compliance with various regulations, including operational records, inspections, and maintenance conducted before and after flights," Joo said.
He said a review into bird strikes and regulations aimed at reducing such incidents would also be undertaken.
"For new airport projects, we will thoroughly examine bird strike issues and develop supplementary measures with experts,” he added.
“The essence of a responsible response would be renovating the aviation safety systems on the whole to prevent recurrences of similar incidents and building a safer Republic of South Korea,” the country's new acting president, Choi Sang-mok, said Monday.
Could a bird strike have caused S Korea plane crash?
South Korean officials are conducting an emergency safety investigation after 179 people died in the country's worst-ever plane crash on Sunday.
Moments before the flight was due to land, air traffic control issued a bird strike warning - an alert about the risk of colliding with birds.
The investigation will look to confirm if a bird strike did lead to the crash, or if other factors could have been involved.
A bird strike is a collision between a bird and an aircraft in flight.
They pose a danger to planes because jet engines can lose power if birds are sucked into them.
Bird strikes are very common.
In the US, more than 19,600 wildlife strikes were reported to the Federal Aviation Administration in 2023, the majority of which involved birds.
And there were over 1,400 bird strikes in the UK in 2022, only about 100 of which affected planes, according to data from the Civil Aviation Authority.
Bird strikes are very rarely linked to fatal plane crashes.
Engines could stall or shut down if birds are sucked into them, but pilots typically have time to account for this and make an emergency landing.
Pilots are trained to be especially vigilant during the early morning or at sunset, when birds are most active, according to aviation expert Professor Doug Drury, writing in an article for The Conversation this summer.
But deadly accidents involving bird strikes do happen.
Between 1988 and 2023, some 76 people died in the US after planes collided with wildlife, according to the FAA.
One notable incident is a 1995 crash near an Air Force base in Alaska. Some 24 Canadian and American airmen were killed after an aircraft collided with a flock of geese.
A bird strike also caused the famous "Miracle on the Hudson" incident in 2009, when an Airbus plane ditched onto New York's Hudson River after colliding with a flock of geese. All 155 passengers and crew survived.
The events were dramatised in the 2016 film Sully, which starred Tom Hanks as the plane's captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger.
Officials have not confirmed whether the plane did in fact collide with any birds.
But a passenger on the flight messaged a relative, saying that a bird "was stuck in the wing" and that the plane could not land, local media reported.
Lee Jeong-hyun, the chief of the Muan fire department, said a bird strike and bad weather may have contributed to the crash - but that the exact cause was still being investigated.
Aviation expert Chris Kingswood, a pilot who has over 40 years' experience and has flown the same type of aircraft involved in the crash, says video footage doesn't clearly show the cause of the incident.
However, he noted the plane was without its landing gear and wasn't using its flaps in the expected way, suggesting that "everything happened really quite quickly".
"You would normally be forced into that kind of situation if you lose both engines," he told the BBC. "A commercial aeroplane can fly reasonably well and safely on one engine."
He added that altitude is crucial if a bird strike damages both engines, as pilots at low altitude would face "a huge number of decisions in a very short space of time".
He said there is an alternative system to operate both the landing gear and flaps if the engines fail.
But according to Kingswood: "If they were at a relatively low altitude, just several thousand feet, then they've really got to focus on flying the aeroplane and finding somewhere safe to put it down."
Other experts have questioned whether a bird strike alone could have caused the crash.
"A bird strike is not unusual, problems with an undercarriage are not unusual," Geoffrey Thomas, the editor of Airline News, told Reuters.
"Bird strikes happen far more often, but typically they don't cause the loss of an airplane by themselves," he added.
Australian airline safety expert Geoffrey Dell told the news agency: "I've never seen a bird strike prevent the landing gear from being extended."
He said a bird strike could have impacted the plane's engines if a flock had been sucked in, but it would not have shut them down straight away, meaning pilots would have had time to deal with the situation.
What we know about the deadly Jeju Air plane crash in South Korea
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea has vowed thorough investigations to find what caused a plane crash that killed 179 people, saying Monday that it will also inspect all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by the country’s airlines.
Sunday’s crash, the nation’s deadliest aviation disaster in decades, has sent a shock wave through South Korean society, which is already facing a political crisis that led to the successive impeachments of the country’s top two officials — President Yoon Suk Yeol and Prime Minister Han Duk-soo.
Here are things to know about developments on the crash.
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Jeju Air flight 7C 2216 had departed from Bangkok and was making its landing at Muan International Airport in southern South Korea. After an initial failed landing attempt, the Boeing 737-800 plane received a bird strike warning from the ground control center. The pilot then issued a distress signal before the plane came down with its front landing gear closed, overshot the runway, slammed into a concrete fence and burst into a fireball.
Observers say videos of the crash showed the plane was suffering from suspected engine trouble, but the landing gear malfunction was likely the main reason for the crash.
South Korean Transport Ministry officials said Monday they will examine whether the fence the plane hit — which housed a set of antennas designed to guide aircraft safely during landings — should have been made with lighter materials that would break more easily upon impact. They said they were also trying to establish whether there were any communication problems between air traffic controllers and the pilot.
Ministry officials said Monday the plane’s flight data and cockpit audio recorders were moved to a research center at Seoul’s Gimpo International Airport ahead of their analysis. Ministry officials earlier said it would take months to complete the investigation of the crash.
The crash wrapped up a troubling 2024 for U.S. aviation giant Boeing, which has grappled with safety problems, a machinists strike and plunging stock prices.
Experts say the 737-800 aircraft is a more proven model than the company’s much-maligned 737 Max jetliners, which were linked to fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019. Still, South Korean authorities said they’ll conduct safety inspections on all of the 737-800s operated by domestic airlines, including 39 by Jeju Air.
Representatives from Boeing and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board were to travel to Seoul to participate in the South Korean investigation.
On Monday, another Boeing 737-800 plane operated by Jeju Air returned to the Gimpo airport shortly after takeoff when the pilot detected a landing gear issue. Jeju Air said the issue was resolved through communication with a land-based equipment center but the pilot decided to return to Gimpo as a precautionary measure.
Only two people — both crew members — survived. They were rescued from the plane’s tail section, the only part of the aircraft that remained relatively intact after the crash.
One of the survivors was treated for fractures to his ribs, shoulder blade and upper spine. Ju Woong, director of the Ewha Womans University Seoul Hospital who treated him, said the man told doctors he “woke up to find (himself) rescued.”
The passengers were predominantly South Korean, although they included two Thai nationals.
The Transport Ministry said Monday that authorities have identified 146 bodies and are collecting DNA and fingerprint samples from the other 33.
Park Han Shin, a representative of the bereaved families, said they were told that the bodies of their loved ones were so badly damaged that officials need time before returning them to their families. He called for the government to mobilize more personnel.
The crash caps a tumultuous month for South Korea that began with Yoon’s extraordinary but short-lived martial law imposition. Following that, the opposition-led legislature voted to impeach Yoon and then his replacement, Han. Deputy Prime Minister Choi Sang-mok is now the country’s acting president.
Also, the safety minister resigned and the police chief was arrested over their roles in the declaration of martial law. The absence of the top officials directly responsible for handling disasters has caused concerns among many people.
Choi quickly traveled to the crash site, met bereaved families and presided over emergency meetings to discuss the incident.
On Monday, Choi instructed authorities to conduct an emergency review of the country’s overall aircraft operation systems. He said that South Korea should use the crash as a chance to formulate steps to prevent the recurrence of similar disasters and build a safer country.
World leaders expressed their sympathies as South Korea dealt with the tragedy.
Thailand’s prime minister, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, expressed deep condolences to the families and ordered the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to provide assistance immediately.
U.S. President Joe Biden issued a statement saying he was “deeply saddened” by the tragedy.
“As close allies, the American people share deep bonds of friendship with the South Korean people and our thoughts and prayers are with those impacted by this tragedy. The United States stands ready to provide any necessary assistance,” he said.
The office of United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he extends his “heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims and expresses his solidarity with the people and Government of the Republic of Korea during this difficult time.”
Pope Francis offered condolences from St. Peter’s Square, while Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said he was “deeply saddened by the loss of many precious lives.”
'It's unbearable': Families wait to see loved ones' bodies at airport
Hundreds of grieving people camped out at Muan International Airport in South Korea are furious that they have not yet seen the bodies of their loved ones who died after a Jeju Air plane crash-landed on Sunday.
Amid angry shouts, police superintendent general Na Won-o explained that the delay was due to officials taking their time to carefully identify all 179 victims, whose bodies were badly damaged in the crash.
"Can you promise that they will be put back together?" a middle-aged man asked, visibly emotional.
Another person asked for the victims' remains to be released as they were, but Na said officials wanted to make their best effort to collect and match as many bodies as they could.
These grim details left some family members in tears, while most sat in stunned silence, exhausted.
The Boeing 737-800, which was travelling from Bangkok to Muan International Airport, skidded off the runway after touching down and crashed into a wall shortly after 09:00 local time (00:00 GMT) on Sunday.
The accident killed 179 of the 181 people onboard, making it the deadliest plane crash on South Korean soil.
Four crew members were among the victims, while two were rescued from the wreckage alive.
Among the relatives of victims that the BBC spoke to was Shin Gyu-ho, who lost his two grandsons and son-in-law.
Frustrated with how long the identification process was taking, the 64-year-old said he had thought about smashing the PA system used for police briefings in anger.
While the body of Shin's son-in-law has been identified, he was told that his two grandsons - a high-school sophomore and a senior - were "too scattered to be recognised".
His daughter and granddaughter have holed up in a privacy tent at the airport because "they cannot hold themselves together", he said.
For Maeng Gi-su's nephew and his nephew's two sons, a celebratory trip to Thailand to mark the end of the college entrance exams ended in tragedy when all three died on the flight.
"I can't believe the entire family has just disappeared," Maeng, 78, told the BBC.
"My heart aches so much."
The 179 people who died on flight 7C2216 were aged between three and 78 years old, although most were in their 40s, 50s and 60s, according to Yonhap news agency. Two Thai nationals are among the dead and the rest are believed to be South Korean, authorities have said.
Five of the people who died were children under the age of 10, with the youngest passenger being a three-year-old boy.
One man in his sixties said five of his family members spanning three generations had been on the plane, including his sister-in-law, his daughter, her husband and their young children, according to Yonhap news agency.
Many of the passengers had been celebrating the Christmas holidays in Thailand and were returning home.
The cousin of one victim, Jongluk Doungmanee, told BBC Thai she was "shocked" when she heard the news.
"I had goosebumps. I couldn't believe it," Pornphichaya Chalermsin said.
Jongluk had been living in South Korea for the past five years working in the agriculture industry. She usually travelled to Thailand twice a year during the holidays to visit her ailing father and two children - aged 7 and 15 - from a former marriage.
She had spent over two weeks this time with her husband, who had returned to South Korea earlier in December.
Her father, who suffers from a heart disease, was "devastated" when he found out about her death, said Pornphichaya.
"It is unbearable for him. This was his youngest daughter", she said, adding that all three of his children work abroad.
Another 71-year-old father, Jeon Je-young, told the Reuters news agency that his daughter Mi-Sook, who was identified by her fingerprints, had been on her way home after travelling with friends to Bangkok for the festivities.
"My daughter, who is only in her mid-40s, ended up like this," he said, adding that he had last seen her on 21 December, when she brought some food and next year's calendar to his house - that would become their last moment together.
Mi-Sook leaves behind a husband and teenage daughter.
"This is unbelievable", said Jeon.
One woman said her sister, who had been having a tough time decided to visit Thailand as life began to improve for her.
"She's had so many hardships and gone traveling because her situation was only just beginning to improve," she told Yonhap news agency.
The two flight attendants who survived the crash were found in the tail end of the plane, the most intact part of the wreckage.
One was a 33-year-old man, with the surname Lee, who was rushed to a hospital in Mokpo, about 25km (15.5 mi) south of the airport, but was later transferred to Ewha Womans University Seoul Hospital in the capital, Yonhap news agency reported.
"When I woke up, I had already been rescued," he told doctors at the hospital, according to its director Ju Woong, who spoke during a press briefing.
The survivor, who suffered multiple fractures, is receiving special care due to the risk of after-effects, including total paralysis, Ju said.
The other survivor, a 25-year-old female flight attendant with the surname Koo, is being treated at Asan Medical Center in eastern Seoul, Yonhap added.
She has sustained head and ankle injuries but is reportedly in a stable condition.
It's not yet known exactly what caused the disaster, but a number of eye witnesses say they could see that the plane was in trouble before the crash.
Restaurant owner Im Young-Hak said he initially thought it was an oil tanker accident.
"I went outside and saw thick, dark smoke. After that, I heard a loud explosion, not from the crash itself. Then there were more explosions – at least seven," he told Reuters.
"We feel bad when accidents happen on the other side of the world, but this happened right here. It's traumatic."
Yoo Jae-yong, 41, who was staying near to the airport, told local media he saw a spark on the right wing shortly before the crash.
Kim Yong-cheol, 70, said the plane failed to land initially and circled back to try again.
He added that he witnessed "black smoke billowing into the sky" after hearing a "loud explosion", Yonhap agency reported.
One firefighter who was dispatched to the scene told Reuters he had never seen something "on this scale".
BBC reporters on the ground have said the sounds of family members crying echoed through the terminal on Sunday evening, while others are angry at how long it is taking to identify the bodies.
Hundreds remain at Muan International Airport waiting for loved ones to be identified.
Some have given DNA saliva samples to officials to help identify the bodies of victims, and the government has offered funeral services and temporary housing to bereaved families.
A national period of mourning has also been declared for the next seven days.
But for all the loved ones of those who died, many questions still remain - not least the cause of the crash, and whether it could have been averted.
"The water near the airport is not deep," Jeon told Reuters.
"(There) are softer fields than this cement runway. Why couldn't the pilot land there instead?"
His daughter Mi-Sook was almost home, so saw no reason to call and leave a final message, he says.
"She was almost home - she thought she was coming home".
Additional Reporting by BBC Thai's Thanyaporn Buathong
Sobbing and prayers echo through South Korean airport as families mourn air crash victims
The sounds of sobbing, prayers and anguish echoed through the departures hall of an airport in southwestern South Korea on Monday as families of the victims killed when a passenger jet crash-landed over the weekend waited for their loved ones to be identified.
All but two people on a Jeju Air plane carrying 175 passengers and six crew died after it crashed at the airport in Muan County just after 9 a.m. local time on Sunday – in what is the deadliest aviation disaster the country has seen in nearly 30 years.
Loved ones inside Muan International Airport wept as medics announced the names of the victims who had been identified. So far, 146 victims have been identified, while efforts are underway to name the remaining 33 bodies, according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.
In the soaring atrium that normally serves as the airport’s departure hall, scores of families huddled together, murmuring hushed prayers. Some were seen wrapped in each other’s embrace, weeping, while several monks spoke to gathered groups. Rows of yellow tents stood erected for people who had stayed overnight. Several relatives could be seen yelling at officials, demanding more information.
Investigators are working to pinpoint what may have caused the crash of Jeju Air flight 7C 2216, which was flying from Bangkok to Muan. South Korean officials confirmed on Monday that the pilot had reported a bird strike before he made the doomed emergency landing.
“The pilot reported an emergency declaration and go-around due to a bird strike,” said Kang Jung-hyun, a senior official at the transport ministry. The pilot said “mayday, mayday, mayday” three times and used the terms “bird strike” and “go-around,” the official said.
A “go-around” is an aviation term that means a landing is aborted when a plane nears a final approach and instead the pilot will instead increase speed and ascend before attempting another approach or diverting elsewhere.
Footage of Sunday’s crash broadcast by multiple South Korean news outlets showed that neither the back nor front landing gear was visible. Video showed the plane, a Boeing 737-800, sliding on its belly at high speed, hitting an earthen embankment and erupting in a fireball.
Experts told CNN that the plane’s undercarriage – specifically, the wheels used for takeoff and landing – appeared not to have fully deployed. But what caused this failure to deploy, something analysts said was extremely rare, is still unclear.
Two black boxes – the flight data and voice recorders – have been recovered from the crash site, according to a briefing by the transport ministry. But the flight recorder suffered external damage that required it to be sent to an analysis center in Seoul to see how much information could be extracted and whether it needed to be sent to the United States, the ministry said.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is leading a team of US investigators, including from Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration, to assist South Korean authorities. The NTSB said any information would be released by South Korea’s Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board.
South Korea’s transport ministry said Monday that the control tower had warned the pilot about birds in the area shortly before the pilot reported a bird strike, made the mayday call and asked to land in the opposite direction.
The ministry made the clarification after saying Sunday the control tower had instructed the pilot to change course shortly after he made the mayday call.
The landing attempt occurred about two minutes after the mayday call, according to the ministry.
Uncertainty remains as to what exactly went wrong, with some aviation experts questioning how much impact a bird strike could have had in bringing down the Jeju Air plane.
The transport ministry said the head pilot on the flight had held the role since 2019 and had about 6,800 hours of flight experience.
South Korea’s acting president, Choi Sang-mok, has declared seven days of national mourning and ordered an investigation into the country’s entire airline system.
The transport ministry will inspect all Boeing 737-800 planes in the country, according to Deputy Transport Minister Joo Jong-wan.
A total of 101 planes of the model used by six airlines are subject to the inspection with authorities looking at each jet’s maintenance record on major parts, including the engine and landing gear, Joo said.
“We will transparently disclose the progress of the investigation into the accident, even before the final results are released, and keep the bereaved families informed,” Choi said Monday at a disaster control meeting in Seoul.
A day earlier, Choi, also the country’s finance minister, had arrived at the scene of the crash and declared it a special disaster zone as he expressed his “heartfelt condolences” to the families of the victims.
The tragedy comes only two days after he assumed presidential duties following parliament’s vote to impeach prime minister Han Duck-soo, who had been acting president since President Yoon Sul Yeol was impeached and suspended from power following his short-lived martial law decree earlier this month.
Choi is leading the centralized disaster control team, a responsibility typically assumed by the prime minister.
More than 700 personnel from the police, military, and coast guard have been mobilized for on-site response efforts, according to the transport ministry.
Mourners have begun laying flowers and candles at a public memorial altar set up in Muan to honor victims of the crash, according to video by Reuters news agency.
The victims of Sunday’s crash include 84 males, 85 females, and 10 people whose gender could not be determined, according to the South Jeolla Fire Service. Both of the survivors were crew members, one man and one woman, according to the rescue team.
Two Thai nationals were among those on board, according to the South Korean transport ministry. All the other passengers were South Korean.
A father of one of the Thai victims, Boonchuay Duangmanee, told the Associated Press he “never thought that this would be the last time we would see each other forever.”
His daughter, Jongluk, had been working in a factory in South Korea for several years, he told the AP. She had been in Thailand visiting family before departing on the flight from Bangkok to Muan.
“I heard that the plane exploded in Korea this morning. But I did not expect at all that my daughter would be on this flight,” he said.
Another man who lost his daughter told Reuters he had not heard from her before the crash.
“She was almost home so she didn’t feel the need to make a call,” 71-year-old Jeon Je-Young said of his daughter Jeon Mi-Sook.
“She thought she was coming home. I figure in those last moments when she did try to reach out, the damage had already been done and the plane had probably crashed,” he said.
This article has been updated.
