A jetliner skidded off a runway, slammed into a concrete fence and burst into flames Sunday in South Korea after its landing gear failed to deploy
Pic/AFP
The United States of America is sending air accident investigators to South Korea after a Jeju Air plane crashed while landing at Muan International Airport. The team of investigators includes officials from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Boeing.
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"The National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) is leading a team of United States of America investigators (NTSB, Boeing and FAA) to assist the Republic of Korea’s Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board (ARAIB) with their investigation of the Dec. 29 Jeju Air accident at Muan International Airport in Muan, Republic of Korea. Per international protocols under the International Civil Aviation Organization's (ICAO) Annex 13, any information about the investigation will be released by the ARAIB," said a statement from NTBS USA.
A jetliner skidded off a runway, slammed into a concrete fence and burst into flames Sunday in South Korea after its landing gear failed to deploy. All but two of the 181 people on board were killed in one of the country's worst aviation disasters, officials said.
The 737-800 operated by Jeju Air plane arrived from Bangkok and crashed while attempting to land in the town of Muan, about 290 kilometres south of Seoul.
The crash killed 179 people, the South Korean fire agency said. Emergency workers pulled two crew members, to safety. They were conscious and did not appear to have any life-threatening injuries, health officials said.
Lee Jeong-hyeon, chief of the Muan fire station, told a televised briefing that the plane was completely destroyed, with only the tail assembly still recognisable in the wreckage. Officials were investigating the cause of the crash, including whether the aircraft was struck by birds, Lee said.
South Korea's acting President Choi Sang-mok, also declared Muan County a special disaster zone and visited the crash site to direct search operations.
The Jeju Air flight 2216 was scheduled from Bangkok to Muan, departing Bangkok at 02:29 local time (19:29 UTC). The flight approached Muan approximately 4 hours 30 minutes after departure.
The last Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Brodcast (ADS-B) transponder signal received from the aircraft occurred at 23:58:50 UTC with the aircraft located at 34.95966, 126.38426 at an altitude of 500 feet approaching Runway 1 at Muan.
ADS-B is a system that helps air traffic management (ATM) services (usually Air Traffic Controllers) maintain aircraft separation by providing aircraft location data.
South Korean investigators have recovered both the flight data recorder (FDR) and the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) from the aircraft. Reports suggest that the flight data recorder (FDR) was recovered in a damaged condition.
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