South Korean Acting President Choi Sang-mok ordered an emergency safety inspection of the country’s entire airline fleet on Dec. 30 as investigators work to determine the cause of the crash that killed 179 people on Sunday.
All 175 passengers and four crew members were killed when a Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 made an emergency landing at Muan International Airport in the southwest of the country, then skidded off the runway and exploded when it hit a perimeter wall.
Two crew members were pulled out alive and their recollections of the moments leading up to the crash could prove pivotal to the investigation.
The victims were mainly South Korean nationals who were returning from holidays in Thailand. Two Thai nationals also died.
The destruction of Jeju Air Flight 7C2216 was South Korea’s deadliest aviation disaster since 1997, when 228 people died in a Korean Airlines crash in Guam.
“Even before the final results are out, we ask that officials transparently disclose the accident investigation process and promptly inform the bereaved families,” Choi said on Monday. “As soon as the accident recovery is conducted, the transport ministry is requested to conduct an emergency safety inspection of the entire aircraft operation system to prevent recurrence of aircraft accidents.”
Choi said the priority had to be identifying the victims, supporting their families, and treating the survivors.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced a special inspection of the 101 Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by South Korean airliners, but so far they have not been grounded.
US Investigators Brought In
Following global aviation rules, South Korea is leading a civil investigation into the crash but will involve the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) because the plane was designed and built in the United States.The NTSB said a team of U.S. investigators was helping South Korea’s aviation authority. Boeing and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration will also be part of the investigation.
The plane was powered by two CFM 56-7B26 engines. CFM International is a joint venture between GE Aerospace and Safran of France.
Transport ministry officials have said Flight 7C2216 had flown from Bangkok in Thailand and was on its approach to Muan, where it was due to land shortly after 9 a.m. local time on Sunday when air traffic controllers warned of the presence of birds.
The pilots told air traffic control the plane had suffered a bird strike, then declared a mayday and said they would seek to make another approach before landing.
Questions remain about why the plane was traveling so fast when it came in to land, and why its landing gear had not been deployed.
Aviation experts who examined the footage commented that the flaps on the wings, which slow the aircraft during landing, did not appear to be deployed.
John Cox, a retired airline pilot and CEO of Safety Operating Systems in St. Petersburg, Florida, said they might have suffered a hydraulic failure and did not have time to manually lower the landing gear.
The transport ministry’s director of aviation policy, Joo Jong-wan, said 146 of the bodies have been identified, and DNA tests and fingerprinting are being conducted on the remaining 33 people.
Stocks of Jeju Air, a private airline, fell to their lowest levels on record in trading on Monday.
The air disaster comes as South Korea copes with a political crisis, caused by the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol.
Choi, who is also the country’s deputy prime minister and finance minister, presided over a special crash task force meeting on Monday. He said, “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.”
