US investigators examine site of fatal Jeju Air plane crash in South Korea
A team of US investigators including representatives from Boeing have examined the site of a plane crash that killed 179 people in South Korea.
It comes as South Korean officials have launched safety inspections on all the country's Boeing 737-800 aircraft.
Footage of the crash showed the Jeju Air plane skidding across the runway with its landing gear seemingly still closed, before colliding with a concrete wall. Thick black smoke billowed from the wreckage, which was engulfed in flames.
South Korea's Transport Ministry said that a delegation of eight US investigators - one from the Federal Aviation Administration, three from the National Transportation Safety Board and four from Boeing - made an on-site visit to the crash site on Tuesday. The results of their examination weren’t immediately available.
Emergency officials in Muan said the plane's landing gear is thought to have malfunctioned.
The country's worst aviation disaster in decades killed all but two of the 181 passengers and crew, including a three-year-old.
The two survivors, both crew members, were pulled from the plane's tail section - the only part that was still recognisable after the crash.
The South Korean ministry also said authorities are looking at maintenance and operation records on all of the country's 101 Boeing 737-800s during five days of safety checks.
Kim E-bae, Jeju Air’s president, told reporters on Tuesday that his company will add more maintenance workers and reduce flight operations by 10-15% until March as part of efforts to enhance the safety of aircraft operations.
John Hansman, an aviation expert at MIT, said the crash was most likely the result of a problem with the plane’s hydraulic control systems.
He said that would be consistent with the landing gear and wing flaps not being deployed “and might indicate a control issue which would explain the rush to get on the ground.”
The Boeing 737-800 is a widely used plane with a good safety record, according to Najmedin Meshkati, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California.
Meshkati questioned the location of a solid wall just a few hundred feet (metres) past the end of the runway, given that planes occasionally do overshoot runways.
South Korean officials have said they will look into whether the Muan airport’s localiser - a concrete fence housing a set of antennas designed to guide aircraft safely during landings - should have been made with lighter materials that would break more easily upon impact.
Investigators retrieved the jet’s black boxes, but it may take months to complete the investigation into the crash, Joo, the Transport Ministry official, told reporters on Monday.
The Muan crash is South Korea's deadliest aviation disaster since 1997, when a Korean Airlines plane crashed in Guam, killing 228 people on board.
On Tuesday, the Transport Ministry said that authorities have identified 175 bodies and are conducting DNA tests to identify the remaining five.
Bereaved families said that officials told them that the bodies were so badly damaged that officials needed time before returning them to relatives.
A seven-day national mourning has been declared until January 4.
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