South Korean authorities confirmed this Tuesday that they have identified 174 of the 179 people killed in the crash of Jeju Air flight 7C2216which occurred on Sunday in the Muan International Airportconsidered the worst civil aviation accident in the history of the country.
According to investigators, 32 victims could not initially be identified through fingerprints due to the state of their bodies. However, dna tests They allowed 17 of them to be identified in the first phase and 10 more in the second. Five bodies remain unidentified due to “DNA inconsistencies“, they noted in a press conference.
Four of the victims have already been handed over to their families, who have begun preparations for the funeral in their cities of origin. According to initial estimates, the process of identifying and delivering the bodies could take up to ten dayssince most were severely charred in the post-impact fire.
The incident occurred at 9:03 local time (00:07 GMT) on Sunday, when the Boeing 737-800which had taken off from Suvarnabhumi airport in Bangkok, landed in Muan without deploying the landing gear. The aircraft collided with a wall as it left the runway and burst into flames.
Of the 181 occupants, only two survived the impact: a passenger and a flight attendant. There were six crew members and 175 passengers on board, mostly South Koreans returning from family vacations. Among them were two passengers of Thai nationality.
Authorities are investigating the cause of the accident, noting that it may have been due to a landing gear system failure and other braking mechanisms, possibly caused by a collision with a bird. The plane’s two black boxes, recovered hours after the incident, are being analyzed, although one of them, the flight data recorder (FDR), has damage that could delay its decoding between one and six months, according to the Ministry of Transportation. .
The acting president, Choi Sang-mokordered this Tuesday a comprehensive review of the operations of national airlines.
“The Ministry of Transportation should thoroughly reexamine the overall aircraft operations system, starting with this inspection, and immediately implement any necessary improvements.”Choi said during a disaster control meeting held in Seoul.
The Government has already initiated an emergency safety inspection that includes six local airlines and all Boeing 737-800 models in operation in the country.
A South Korean airline plane Jeju Water was forced to return this Monday to Gimpo International Airportin western Seoul, after detecting a landing gear problem shortly after takeoff. The incident occurs one day after the tragic accident of flight 7C2216 of the same company.
The flight 7C101which had departed at 6:37 local time (21:37 GMT on Sunday) bound for Jeju Island, was carrying 161 passengers. The crew was informed of a signal indicating a possible landing gear failure and, although it was later confirmed that the system was working correctly, the captain decided to return to the airport as a precaution.
The plane landed without problems in Gimpo at 7:25 (22:25 GMT on Sunday), according to airport sources cited by the agency. Yonhap.
After landing, the passengers were transferred to another aircraft of the same model, a Boeing 737-800to resume the flight to Jeju. However, 21 passengers decided not to board on the new plane, citing anxiety after the incident.
Jeju Air said it will conduct a full inspection of the aircraft before resuming service. The airline operates a fleet of 41 aircraft, of which 39 son Boeing 737-800a model widely used and considered among the safest in the world.
(With information from EFE)
