Muan (South Korea): In one of the worst aviation disasters in South Korea, an aeroplane of Jetu Air carrying 181 passengers on board skidded off the runway and rammed into a concrete fence of the airport on Sunday. At least 174 passengers were killed and others were wounded critically, reports said.
According to the National Fire Agency, the incident happened about 290 km south of Seoul. The fire has been doused from wreckage of Jetu Air Company plane and efforts were on to rescue passengers. “We have extricated 174 bodies so far. “Emergency workers have pulled out two people — one passenger and one crew member. As many as 32 fire tenders were pressed into service besides several helicopters to contain the fire,” the fire man said.
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The crash of the Boeing 737-800 at Muan International Airport is the first fatal accident involving the country’s biggest budget airline, which was founded in 2005. Jeju Air ranks only behind Korean Air Lines and Asiana Airlines in terms of the number of passengers in South Korea.
In a television footage, the Jeju Air plane was seen skidding across the airstrip and collided head-on with a concrete wall on the outskirts of the facility. The transport ministry said the incident happened at 9:03 am local time.
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Officials said that an inquiry has been ordered to know the reason for the accident and subsequent fire in the plane. “It appeared that the plane’s landing gear was not functioning properly. The plane was returning from Bangkok and its passengers included two Thai nationals,” a transport ministry official was quoted saying this in the media.
Reports said that it was one of the deadliest air disasters in South Korea’s aviation history. The last time South Korea suffered a large-scale air disaster was in 1997, when a Korean Airline plane crashed in Guam, killing 228 people on board.
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The previous most deadly air accident in South Korea was in 2002, when a Boeing 767-200 operated by Air China crashed into a hill near South Korea’s southeastern port city of Busan, killing 129 people and injuring 37.