Mourning the South Korea plane crash victims: ‘The entire family has just disappeared’
With no more hope of survivors, family’s of those killed in today’s plane crash in South Korea are having to come to terms with the devasting loss.
A total of 179 people died after Jeju Air flight 7C2216 belly-landed at Muan Airport, skidded into a concrete fence and burst into flames.
Only a man and a woman survived, both crew members. They were pulled from the inferno and are now being treated in hospital with non life-threatening injuries.
The man, a 33-year-old flight attendant, suffered multiple fractures, while the 25-year-old woman is said to have injured her ankle and head.
At the airport, family members of those who didn’t make it waited for their loved ones’ bodies to be identified.
Wails could be heard as officials announced names of some, while several yellow tents were set up to give people privacy.
All of the passengers onboard the plane, which had flown from Bangkok, Thailand, were Korean apart from two who were Thai.
One man waiting at the airport, 78-year-old Maeng Gi-su, told the BBC his nephew and his nephew’s two sons had been on the flight.
They’d travelled to Thailand to celebrate the youngest taking his college entrance exams.
‘I can’t believe the entire family has just disappeared. My heart aches so much’, Mr Gi-su said.
Speaking to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, one woman who gave her surname as Kim said her sister had been onboard the flight.
‘She’s had so many hardships and gone travelling because her situation was only just beginning to improve,’ she added.
Another woman, a 68-year-old with the surname Jo, also lost her sister. ‘My younger sister went to heaven today,’ she said.
An elderly man, meanwhile, who didn’t want to give his name told a reporter: ‘I had a son on board that plane.’
In Thailand, a cousin of one of the Thai passengers, Jongluk Doungmanee, 49, said she was ‘saddened’ and ‘shocked’.
Pornphichaya chalermsin, from Nong Wua So District, Udon Thani, said Jongluk was a mother of two children, aged seven and 15 and had been living in South Korea for five years with her Korean husband.
She and her husband had spent over two weeks travelling in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand with her husband. Her husband had already returned home when she took her flight.
In a televised news conference, Kim E-bae, president of budget airline Jeju Air, bowed deeply with other senior company officials as he apologised to bereaved families and said he feels ‘full responsibility’ for the incident.
Kim said the company hadn’t identified any mechanical problems with the aircraft following regular checkups and that he would wait for the results of government investigations into the cause of the incident.
A government official said air traffic control had issued a bird strike warning, which had delayed the landing.
Two minutes later, at around 9am local time, the pilot issued a Mayday call and was cleared to land from the opposite direction
Video footage shows the plane hitting the runway without its wheels, skidding some distance before crashing into a wall, which then triggered a fiery explosion.
Victims ranged in age from just three to 78, with most passengers either in their 30s, 40s or 50s, according to officials.
The country declared a seven day national mourning period effective from Sunday, with memorial altars to be set up nationwide.
It is the first fatal accident in the history of Jeju Air, one of South Korea’s largest low-cost carriers, which was set up in 2005.
On August 12, 2007, a Bombardier Q400 operated by Jeju Air carrying 74 passengers came off the runway due to strong winds at the southern Busan-Gimhae airport, resulting in a dozen injuries.
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