 "Rescue team members work at the site of a plane crash at Muan International Airport in Muan, South Korea on Dec. 31, 2024. File Image- AP")
South Korea has decided to extend to April 18 the shutdown of Muan international airport where a Jeju Air passenger jet crashed last month, the transport ministry said on Saturday.
All but two of the 181 people aboard the Boeing 737-800 operated by South Korean budget airline Jeju Air died in a crash last year. Video showed the aircraft, without its landing gear deployed, crash-landed on its belly and overshoot a runaway at South Korea’s southern Muan International Airport before it slammed into concrete fence and burst into a flame.
The deadliest accident in aviation history occurred in 1977, when two Boeing 747 jumbo jets collided on a foggy runway on the Spanish island of Tenerife, killing 583 of the 644 people on board the planes. Spanish investigators blamed the captain of the KLM 747 for taking off without clearance from air traffic controllers.
In an act of terrorism, nearly 3,000 people died when al-Qaida hijackers crashed four jetliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., and a field in southwest Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001.
With inputs from agencies