South Korea’s acting president has ordered an emergency inspection of the country’s airline’s entire safety operations, while authorities plan to quarantine all Boeing 737-800s after 179 people died in the Air Jeju crash on Sunday.
As shocked citizens spent a second day of official mourning and flags flew to half-mast, the government said it would complete an audit of all 101 aircraft in domestic operation, possibly including US investigators. Boeingattached to the probe.
Choi Sang-mok, who was appointed president two days before the disaster, said the inspection was done to overhaul the plane’s security system and “move to a safer Republic of Korea.”
He was speaking as reports emerged that a Jeju Air jet passenger was forced to return to Gimpo Airport in Seoul early Monday, following a problem with the landing gear.
The alleged gear malfunction is among the questions targeted by the investigation into Sunday’s crash, which occurred after the plane went over a bridge in what the aviation industry describes as a “belly port.”
Officials have confirmed that 179 passengers and crew have died on the Jeju Air plane fall down into a wall at Muan International Airport shortly after attempting to land without its exit gear. It is the country’s worst domestic civil aviation disaster.
The two flight attendants – a man and a woman – were ejected from the tail of the aircraft, which was on fire and broke off on impact with the wall. They were being treated at a hospital in Seoul after being transferred from hospitals near the airport, Yonhap news agency said.
The surviving male was being treated for fractures to his ribs, shoulder and upper spine, said Ju Woong, director of Seoul’s Ewha Womans University Hospital. Ju said the man, whose name has not been released, told doctors to “wake up to find a rescue.” Details of the surviving woman were not immediately available.
Officials said the crash could have been caused by a hitting the bird and weather – or a combination of them and other factors – but the exact cause was not yet known.
The plane’s flight recorders and cockpit voice recorders were returned from the wreckage, but media reports said it may be more likely that the flight data recorder was damaged in the crash.
Establishing the cause of a major air disaster typically takes months, and the damage from the missiles is expected to cause further delays, Yonhap said, citing a ground ministry official.
Choi declared the start of seven days of mourning on Sunday, as he tried to coordinate the response to the major disaster in recent days after his replacement. Our predecessor was accused, Han Duck-soo..
Han, too, became interim leader after the impeachment in mid-December Yoon Suk Yeol a successful and brief military declaration earlier.
Hate appeared last month hence as senior politicians from the governing parties and the opposition to comfort the country mourning.
While the search case sets the aircraft model, there will inevitably be questions about the operator of Jeju Air.
The low-cost carrier said everything the families of the victims could support, including financial aid. Its chief executive, Kim E-bae, said in a televised interview that he would shoulder “full responsibility” for the collapse, without cause, in an apology with other senior company officials. He said the company had not identified any mechanical problems with the plane following regular checkups and was awaiting the results of the government’s investigation.
Kim, despite the passionate response he had received from Muan, was trying to talk to his relatives as a person grieving.
Investigators said 141 of the 179 victims had been identified through DNA analysis or fingerprint collection, according to a statement from the land service.
The families of the victims camped overnight at the airport in special shelters set up in the airport corridor after a long day of waiting for news about their loved ones. “My son is on that plane,” said an old man waiting in the airport lounge, who did not ask to be named, adding that his son’s body was among those that had not yet been identified.
The government tower in Muan, 300 kilometers from the south-west of Seoul, announced the bird warning the plane shortly before it intended to land and gave its pilot permission to land in another country. The pilot sent out a distress signal just before the plane passed the bridge and crossed the buffer zone before hitting the wall.
The crash was the worst on South Korean soil and one of the largest in its aviation history. The last time South Korea suffered a major air disaster was in 1997, when a Korean air force crashed into Guam, killing 228 people on board. In 2013, an Asian Airlines plane crashed in San Francisco, killing three people and injuring 200.
Most of the 175 passengers were South Korean nationals, along with two women from Thailand. In total, there were 82 men and 93 women, ranging in age from three to 78 years. Many were in their 40s to 60s and returning from a winter holiday in Thailand when the accident happened.
Boonchuay Duangmanee, the Thai traveler’s father of one, told The Associated Press that his daughter Jongluk worked at a factory in South Korea for several years and returned to Thailand to visit her family. “I never thought this would be the time they would see each other forever,” she said.