The South Korean authorities announced this Monday that have identified 140 of the 179 victims who They lost their lives in the plane crash at Muan International Airport and a large majority have already been moved to a temporary morgue.
“Once we are ready to transfer the bodies after the autopsies carried out by the investigating agencies, “We will contact the families.”said a South Korean official in statements collected by the South Korean Yonhap agency.
The victims’ belongings are being collected from the runway and The area will be kept intact while authorities investigate the exact cause. of the accident.
On Sunday, South Korean Jeju Air flight 7C2216 exploded after landing and skidding off the runway at Muan airport (southwest) and left 179 dead and only two survivors, which It is the worst civil aviation accident ever to occur on South Korean soil.
The accident occurred around 9:03 (00:07 GMT), when the plane, a Boeing 737-800 that departed hours before from Suvarnabhumi airport in Bangkok (Thailand), landed in Muan (290 kilometers southwest of Seoul). without having the landing gear deployed and ended up crashing into a wallwhich caused the device to explode.
On board they traveled 181 people, six crew (pilot, co-pilot and four assistants) and 175 passengersof which 173 were South Koreans, mostly people returning from family vacations, and two of Thai nationality.
At the moment the authorities, who are already investigating the incident, They believe that the cause of the accident could be the failure to deploy the landing gear and other braking mechanisms, possibly due to a collision with a bird.
The two black boxes were found hours after the accident, although the South Korean Ministry of Transportation has reported that the flight data recorder (FDR) has been damagedand that therefore it could take between one and six months to decode it.
