 "Rescue team carry the body of a passenger at the site of a plane fire at Muan International Airport in Muan, South Korea. AP")
South Korea said Monday it was reviewing plans to conduct a “special inspection” of all Boeing 737-800s in operation in the country, after 179 people were killed in a Jeju Air crash involving the aircraft.
“101 B737-800 series aircraft are currently in operation in South Korea. Consequently, we are reviewing plans to conduct a special inspection on B737-800 aircraft,” said Joo Jong-wan, head of the aviation policy bureau at the South Korean transport ministry.
The Transport Ministry said Monday the government plans to conduct safety inspections on all Boeing 737-800 jetliners operated by the country’s airlines.
On Monday, South Korea’s acting President Choi Sang-mok ordered an emergency safety inspection of the country’s entire airline operation system as investigators worked to identify victims and find what caused the country’s deadliest air disaster.
“The essence of a responsible response would be renovating the aviation safety systems on the whole to prevent recurrences of similar incidents and building a safer Republic of South Korea,” said Choi, who is also deputy prime minister and finance minister.
The Boeing 737-800 plane operated by South Korea’s budget airline Jeju Air skidded off a runway at Muan International Airport in the country’s south, slammed into a concrete fence and burst into a fireball. The incident killed all but two of the 181 people aboard. The two survivors are both crew members, and they were pulled from the plane’s tail section — the only part that was still recognizable after the crash.
Joo Jong-wan, the Transport Ministry’s director of aviation policy, said authorities have so far identified 141 of the bodies, and are conducting DNA tests on the other 38.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsAlan Price, a former chief pilot at Delta Air Lines and now a consultant, said the Boeing 737-800 is a “proven airplane” that belongs to a different class of aircraft than the Boeing 737 Max jetliner that was linked to fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019.
With inputs from agencies