Flight 2216 was carrying 175 passengers and six crew from Bangkok to Muan International Airport in the country’s south, according to officials. Some 179 people were killed, with only a pair of flight attendants surviving, Yonhap reported.

The pilot issued a mayday emergency call minutes after the control tower warned of a bird strike. He aborted the landing, started a go-around and switched direction on the runway in his second attempt. The single-aisle plane touched down without its landing gear deployed, sliding down the runway at high speed before hitting a wall at the end of the strip and exploding into flames. 

The accident is the deadliest passenger airline disaster in South Korea to date. Investigators, who managed to retrieve the two flight recorders from the wreckage, will seek to understand how a possible bird strike and the landing-gear failure might be connected, and why the aircraft didn’t come to a standstill before smashing into the embankment. The Boeing 737 plane involved in the crash is considered a reliable workhorse that passed routine maintenance checks, in a country with deep expertise for aircraft servicing. 

South Korea is currently experiencing a deepening political crisis after its president provoked public outrage by briefly imposing martial law earlier this month. Acting President Choi Sang-mok declared a week of mourning.

Bird Strike

Muan’s control tower had warned of the risk of a bird strike at 8:57 a.m. local time, about two minutes before the pilot declared an emergency, officials said. The airport has four personnel working to prevent bird strikes at the time of the crash, including one person outside the tower, they said.

Birds are an aviation hazard because they can be ingested into the turbine or damage other parts of the plane and cause engine failure, though the incidents are rarely deadly. In 2009, an Airbus A320 landed in the Hudson River in New York after a bird strike damaged both engines, in what has become known as the “Miracle on the Hudson” because everyone on board survived.

The pilot in control of the aircraft had 6,800 hours of experience, a typical level for cockpit crew. The control tower had granted him clearance for the plane to land in the opposite direction, and officials said it is unlikely that the runway length caused the crash.

The Boeing 737-800 jet is one of the industry’s most widely used aircraft. The plane, a predecessor to the latest Boeing Max variant, has more than 4,000 planes of its type in service and is also popular in South Korea.

The fire agency said most of the plane was destroyed in the crash. Passengers were ejected upon impact with the wall, Yonhap reported, citing a fire official who said identification of the victims is difficult. Boeing said it’s in contact with Jeju Air and ready to support the airline. 

Authorities will look for clues in the so-called black boxes that contain vital statistics and performance metrics of a flight, as well as taped conversations and sounds from the cockpit.

More than 1,500 people including police, military, coast guard and local government personnel are assisting at the crash site, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. The airport’s runway will remain closed in coming days.

The 15-year-old aircraft, registered HL8088, entered service with Jeju Air in 2017. It was initially delivered in 2009 to Irish discount carrier Ryanair Holdings Plc, according to the Planespotters.net database. The jet was configured to seat as many as 189 passengers. Founded in 2005, Jeju Air operates 42 aircraft, according to its website. 

The plane underwent regular maintenance and there was no evidence or signs of malfunction during the checks, Kim E-Bae, chief executive officer of Jeju Air, said at a press briefing. He wouldn’t speculate on the cause of the crash and asked to wait for an official investigation to determine what had happened.

Two passengers of Flight 2216 were Thai citizens, while authorities are checking on other nationalities besides South Koreans, according to the transport ministry. The two surviving flight attendants have been taken to hospital,  and one of the two survivors is in intensive care unit with a thoracic spine fracture, the doctor at the hospital said in a press briefing.

The jet was returning from Bangkok overnight in a 4 1/2 hour flight. The plane had left Muan for the Thai capital on Saturday evening for a shuttle service typical for low-cost airlines. Muan is a small regional airport that opened in 2007. It was built to help connect cities including Gwangju and Mokpo and increased its regular service of international flights this year, including those of Jeju Air.

The death toll from the accident has surpassed an Air China plane crash near Busan in 2002, killing 129 people, according to the Aviation Safety Network. The accident is also among the worst globally this decade.

The crash is the second major air disaster in less than a week. An incident in Russian airspace led to the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines passenger aircraft on Dec. 25, killing dozens.

Read more: Putin Apologizes to Azeri President After Deadly Plane Crash

After a year of not a single fatal accident involving a large commercial aircraft in 2023, this year has seen a rising number of cases. Early in January, an approaching Japan Airlines Co. Airbus A350 crashed into a small plane on a runway in Tokyo, killing five occupants in the stationary aircraft. 

A few days later, a door plug blew out of an airborne Boeing 737 Max 9 flying in the US. Though nobody was killed in that accident, the episode threw the US planemaker into deep crisis because it exposed sloppy workmanship at the company.

In August, a smaller ATR turboprop plane operated by Brazil’s VoePass crashed near Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos International Airport, killing 58 passengers and four crew members.