Scores of people were killed on Sunday when a passenger jet crash-landed at an airport in southwestern South Korea, with the aircraft careening down the runway on its belly before bursting into flames.
At least 177 people have been confirmed dead so far, according to the local fire department. Two people, both crew members, were pulled alive from the crash site, meaning only two out of the 181 people on board the plane are unaccounted for.
It is the deadliest aviation disaster to hit South Korea since 1997, when a Korean Airlines Boeing 747 crashed in the Guam jungle, with the loss of 228 lives.
What happened?
Jeju Air flight 7C 2216 from Bangkok was carrying 175 passengers and six crew when disaster struck at the airport in Muan county, on the country’s southwestern tip, just after 9 a.m. local time Sunday (7 p.m. ET Saturday).
Footage of Sunday’s crash broadcast by multiple South Korean news outlets showed the plane sliding on its belly at high speed, hitting an earthen embankment and erupting in a fireball.
Neither the back nor front landing gear was visible in the footage – broadcast by networks including YTN, JTBC and MBC – as smoke poured from the back of the sliding aircraft.
Firefighters were later seen using water cannons to extinguish the blazing wreckage of the aircraft, which was listed as a Boeing 737-800 on flight-tracking site FlightAware. Several parts of the aircraft were also seen strewn across the runway.
The victims include 82 males, 83 females, and 12 people whose gender could not be determined, according to the South Jeolla Fire Service. Both of the survivors were crew members, one male and one female, according to the rescue team.
Two Thai nationals were among those on board, according to the South Korean Land Ministry. All the other passengers were South Korean.
What caused the accident?
Experts told CNN that the plane’s undercarriage – specifically, the wheels used for takeoff and landing – appeared not to have fully deployed before landing. But what caused this failure to deploy is still unclear.
Aviation analysts said more evidence is needed before South Korean authorities can definitively pinpoint what might have caused Sunday’s crash, including speculation from local officials about a possible bird strike prior to the crash landing.
The comments came after Lee Jeong-hyun, the head of the Muan Fire Department, briefed the media that the cause was “estimated to be the occurrence of a bird strike or bad weather.” Footage of the crash showed clear skies at the time.
David Soucie, former Federal Aviation Administration safety inspector, said that “speculation is the worst enemy of an investigator.”
“In fact, that’s why it’s so protected when there is an aircraft accident investigation, the information is protected. They’re not supposed to be making any speculation about this type of thing,” Soucie told CNN’s Paula Newton.