SEOUL, South Korea — There were two survivors and 177 confirmed dead in a commercial airplane crash Sunday at a South Korean airport, officials said. There were 181 passengers and crew onboard, and two remain unaccounted for.
The Jeju Air flight 2216 skidded off the runway while landing at Muan International Airport in South Korea, bursting into flames after crashing, a spokesperson for the country’s National Fire Agency said.
The airport is about 180 miles south of Seoul.
The Boeing 787-800 took off from Bangkok, Thailand, shortly after 2 a.m. local time (2 p.m. Saturday ET), according to the flight-tracking platform FlightAware. It was carrying 175 passengers and six crew members, said Joo Jong-wan, director of the Aviation Policy Division at South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.
At least two of the passengers were Thai, Joo said.
“The pilot declared mayday after issuing the bird strike alert,” Joo said, adding that the aircraft was “completely destroyed” in the crash.
The plane skidded along the runway and exploded as it rammed into a barrier, a video verified by NBC News showed. The tail of the plane, was the only part that appeared to remain intact as flames engulfed the aircraft, sending a plume of black smoke into the air.
Joo provided an outline of the sequence of events leading to the disaster.
The plane initially attempted to land on the airport’s Runway 1. But the pilots were then instructed by the control tower to land on the opposite side, Runway 19, due to a bird strike warning, Joo said.
A minute later, the pilots sent a mayday signal following a bird strike and attempted to land on Runway 19.
While passing over the runway, the plane failed to lower the landing gear and struck a safety system called a localizer — which provides guidance during landing — and crashed into a wall, Joo said.
The crash happened around 9:03 a.m. local time (7:03 p.m. ET Saturday), and firefighters put out the initial blaze at 9:46 a.m. local time, the fire agency spokesperson said.
The country’s national fire agency later confirmed the death of 177 people, making it the deadliest airline disaster of the year and the first fatal accident in the history for the low-cost airline, which was founded in 2005.