SEOUL− At least 62 people were killed when an airliner veered off the runway and erupted into a fireball as it slammed into a wall at South Korea’s Muan International Airport on Sunday, the national fire agency said.
Two people were rescued, the agency said, and an official told Reuters they were crew members.
The crash occurred as Jeju Air flight 7C2216, carrying 175 passengers and six crew on a flight from the Thai capital Bangkok, was landing shortly after 9 a.m. (0000 GMT) at the airport in the south of the country, South Korea’s transport ministry said.
The ministry did not confirm the reports of casualties.
At least 58 bodies have been recovered but that number is not final, another fire official told Reuters.
Two people were found alive and rescue operations were under way, a Muan fire official said. Yonhap news agency said three people had been rescued.
Authorities were working to rescue people in the tail section, an airport official told Reuters shortly after the crash.
Video shared by local media showed the twin-engine aircraft skidding down the runway with no apparent landing gear before slamming into a wall in an explosion of flame and debris. Other photos showed smoke and fire engulfing parts of the plane.
Yonhap cited airport authorities as saying the landing gear may have malfunctioned due to a bird strike.
A passenger texted a relative to say a bird was stuck in the wing, agency News1 reported. The person’s final message was, “Should I say my last words?”
Bird strike is among several theories that have not been verified, an official from the transport ministry’s aviation department said, adding that the investigation was ongoing.
The passengers included two Thai nationals and the rest are believed to be South Koreans, according to the transportation ministry.
The plane was a Boeing 737-800 jet operated by Jeju Air, which was seeking details of the accident, including its casualties and cause, an airline spokesperson said.
Boeing and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
All domestic and international flights at Muan airport had been cancelled, Yonhap reported.
South Korean acting President Choi Sang-mok, who was named interim leader of the country on Friday after the previous acting president was impeached amid an ongoing political crisis, ordered all-out rescue efforts, his office said.
His chief of staff convened an emergency meeting.
(Reporting by Hyunsu Yim, Ju-min Park, Cynthia Kim, and Hyunjoo Jin; Writing by Josh Smith; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and William Mallard)