South Korea plane crash updates: 179 killed as Jeju aircraft landing gear malfunctioned; black boxes of flight found.

A passenger plane burst into flames Sunday (December 29, 2024) after it skidded off a runway at a South Korean airport and slammed into a concrete fence when its front landing gear apparently failed to deploy, killing 179 people, officials said, in one of the country’s worst aviation disasters.

The National Fire Agency said the fire was almost put out but officials were still trying to pull people from the Jeju Air passenger plane carrying 181 people at the airport in the town of Muan, about 290 kilometres (180 miles) south of Seoul.

Emergency workers pulled out two people — one passenger and one crew member. It said it deployed 32 fire trucks and several helicopters to contain the fire. The Transport Ministry said the plane was a 15-year-old Boeing 737-800 jet that had arrived from Bangkok and that the crash happened at 9:03 a.m.