A passenger plane burst into flames Sunday after it skid off a runway at a South Korean airport and slammed into a concrete fence when its front landing gear apparently failed to deploy, killing at least 62 people, officials said, in one of the country’s worst aviation disasters.
The National Fire Agency said the fire was almost put out but officials were still trying to pull people from the Jeju Air passenger plane carrying 181 people at the airport in the town of Muan, about 180 miles south of Seoul.
At least 62 people — 37 women and 25 men — had died in the fire, the agency said. Emergency workers pulled out two people — one passenger and one crew member. It said it deployed 32 fire trucks and several helicopters to contain the fire.
Yonhap via REUTERS
South Korean news agency Yonhap reported that there were believed to be 173 South Korean passengers aboard the flight and two Thai nationals. There were also six crew members aboard the flight, Reuters reported.
Footage of the crash aired by YTN television showed the Jeju Air plane skidding across the airstrip, apparently with its landing gear still closed, and colliding head-on with a concrete wall on the outskirts of the facility. The transport ministry said the incident happened at 9:03 a.m. local time. Local TV stations aired footage showing thick pillows of black smoke billowing from the plane engulfed with flame.
Emergency officials in Muan said they were examining the cause of the fire. They said the plane’s landing gear appeared to have malfunctioned. The transport ministry said the plane was returning from Bangkok.
Thailand’s prime minister, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, expressed deep condolences to the families of those affected by the accident through a social media post. Paetongtarn said she had ordered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to provide assistance immediately.
According to Reuters, acting South Korean President Choi Sang-mok has ordered an all-out rescue response, his office said. Choi only became acting president Friday, replacing the previous acting president, Han Duck-soo, following Han’s impeachment. It all comes in the wake of the government crisis caused by the Dec. 3 martial law declaration from former President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was later impeached as well.
This is one of the deadliest disasters in South Korea’s aviation history. The last time South Korea suffered a large-scale air disaster was in 1997, when an Korean Airline plane crashed in Guam, killing 228 people on board.
This comes after 38 people were killed and 29 more injured when an Azerbaijan Airlines plane bound from the Azerbaijani capital of Baku to the Russian city of Grozny crashed in Aktau, Kazakhstan on Christmas Day. On Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued an apology for the crash, and the Kremlin said in a statement that air defense systems were firing near Grozny airport as the airliner “repeatedly” attempted to land there. It did not, though, explicitly say one of these hit the plane.
A U.S. official told CBS News there were early indications a Russian anti-aircraft system may have struck the plane in a region where Ukrainian and Russian forces have traded drone and rocket fire for months.
