Three aviation mishaps occurred in different locations across the globe within a span of few hours with the deadliest taking place in South Korea where 179 people died after Jeju Air’s Boeing 737-800 aircraft belly-landed and skidded off the end of the runway to erupt in flames hitting a wall at Muan International Airport on Sunday.
The ill-fated plane was carrying 181 passengers, including six crew members, when the mishap occurred at the airport, marking one of the deadliest aviation crashes in the country.
Authorities told Yonhap news agency that 179 people died in the accident.
Two passengers were rescued from the aircraft which met with the tragedy at around 9 am.
It is the deadliest aviation accident ever on South Korean soil, and the third-most fatal by death toll involving a South Korean airline, reported Yonhap news agency.
The two rescued passengers were transported to hospital for treatment.
A firefighting agency official told Yonhap: “After the plane collided with the wall, passengers were thrown out of the aircraft. The chances of survival are extremely low.”
The official said the aircraft was nearly completely damaged following the accident.
“It is difficult to identify the deceased,” the official said.
According to reports, the passengers were all South Koreans except two Thai nationals.
Officials told Yonhap that they believe that the landing gear failure, possibly due to a bird strike, may have caused the accident.
An investigation into the incident is currently underway.
One of the survivors says he was already rescued when he woke up
A survivor of the Jeju Air crash, whose surname is Lee, told doctors was already rescued when he woke up.
The survivor was a flight attendant in the crash aircraft.
“When I woke up, I had already been rescued,” he told doctors at the hospital, according to its director Ju Woong, who spoke during a press briefing as quoted by Yonhap.
Passengers narrowly escape after Canadian flight catches fire
In another aviation mishap that occurred in another corner of the globe, passengers on a Canadian flight went through scary moments after the plane caught fire while facing landing difficulties at Halifax Stanfield International Airport in Goffs region on Sunday.
According to reports, the Air Canada Express flight operated by PAL Airlines, which arrived from Newfoundland, experienced landing gear failure at the time of touchdown.
No casualty has been reported in the incident so far.
The airport was temporarily closed following the incident.
Passenger Nikki Valentine told CBC News that one of the plane’s tires did not deploy properly upon landing.
“The plane started to sit at about a 20-degree angle to the left and, as that happened, we heard a pretty loud — what almost sounded like a crash sound — as the wing of the plane started to skid along the pavement, along with what I presume was the engine,” she said.
Dutch plane skids off runway in Norway after emergency landing
Hours before the South Korean aviation tragedy, an Amsterdam-bound flight skidded off the runway at Oslo Torp Sandefjord Airport in southern Norway after it experienced a technical malfunction shortly after takeoff.
All 182 passengers, including the crew of the flight, remained unharmed.
Sharing details about the flight, the Norwegian Police earlier wrote on its website: “A passenger plane en route from Oslo to Amsterdam has made an emergency landing at Torp Airport after a report of a hydraulic failure.”
“The plane has landed on the runway,” police said.
All passengers of the KLM Royal Dutch Airlines-operated Boeing 737-800 were evacuated from the flight.
Meanwhile, KLM has decided to send a flight to Oslo to pick up the passengers stranded in the airport, media reports said.
Several videos of the flight are currently going viral on social media platforms.