‘Should I say my last words?’: Tragic final text as more than 170 feared dead in South Korea plane crash

At least 124 people have been killed when an airliner landed without wheels, veering off the runway and erupting in a fireball as it slammed into a wall at South Korea’s Muan International Airport.

Jeju Air flight 7C2216, arriving from the Thai capital Bangkok with 181 people on board, was attempting to land on Sunday morning at the airport in the south of the country, South Korea’s transport ministry said.

It’s the deadliest air accident involving a South Korean airline in nearly three decades, according to ministry data.

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Video from local media shows the twin-engine Boeing 737-800 skidding down the runway with no apparent landing gear before slamming into a wall in an explosion of flame and debris.

Two crew members, a man and a woman, were rescued from the tail section, Muan fire chief Lee Jung-hyun told a briefing.

The fire was extinguished by the early afternoon, Lee said.

“Only the tail part retains a little bit of shape, and the rest of (the plane) looks almost impossible to recognise,” he said.

Authorities have switched from rescue to recovery operations, and were searching nearby areas for bodies possibly thrown from the plane, Lee said.

The two crew were in hospital with medium to severe injuries, the head of the local public health centre said.

Mortuary vehicles were lined up to take bodies away, and authorities said a temporary morgue had been established.

The crash site smelled of aviation fuel and blood, according to Reuters witnesses, and workers in protective suits and masks combed the area while soldiers searched through bushes.

Most of 175 passengers and six crew were presumed dead, Yonhap news agency reported.

The crash is the worst by any South Korean airline since a 1997 Korean Air crash in Guam that killed more than 200 people.

Investigators were looking into bird strikes and weather conditions as possible factors, Lee said.

Yonhap cited airport authorities as saying a bird strike might have caused the landing gear to malfunction.

The control tower issued a bird strike warning and shortly afterwards the pilots declared mayday, a transport ministry official said, without specifying whether the flight said it struck any birds.

The aircraft made its ill-fated attempt to land about a minute after the mayday call.

A passenger texted a relative to say a bird was stuck in the wing, the News1 agency reported, with the person’s final message being: “Should I say my last words?”

The passengers included two Thai nationals and the rest were believed to be South Koreans the transportation ministry said.

No Australians were known to be on board, the country’s foreign ministry said.

The Boeing 737-800 jet, operated by Jeju Air, was manufactured in 2009.

Jeju Air CEO Kim E-bae apologised for the accident, bowing deeply during a televised briefing.

He said the cause of the crash was unknown, that the aircraft had no record of accidents and there were no early signs of malfunction.

The airline would co-operate with investigators and make supporting the bereaved its top priority, Kim said.

No abnormal conditions were reported when the aircraft left Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, Airports of Thailand said.

Founded in 2005, Jeju Air is a low-cost airline that operates international routes to Japan, Thailand and the Philippines, as well as numerous domestic flights.

Boeing said in a statement that it was in contact with Jeju Air and stood ready to provide support, and extended its “deepest condolences” to the families who lost loved ones.

All domestic and international flights at Muan airport had been cancelled, Yonhap reported.

South Korean Acting President Choi Sang-mok, named interim leader of the country on Friday in an ongoing political crisis, visited the scene of the accident and said the government was putting all its resources into dealing with the crash.

Two Thai women were on the plane, aged 22 and 45, the Thai government said, adding details were still being verified.

Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra sent condolences to the families of the dead and injured in a post on X, saying she had instructed the foreign ministry to provide assistance.