Jeju Air Flight 2216 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Suvarnabhumi Airport near Bangkok, Thailand, to Muan International Airport in Muan County, South Korea.

On 29 December 2024, a Boeing 737-800 passenger aircraft operating the flight overshot the runway at Muan International Airport and crashed into a barrier.

Out of the 181 occupants, 176 people were confirmed to have been killed and at least two were injured.

The accident was the worst aviation-related incident for a South Korean airliner since the 1997 crash of Korean Air Flight 801 in Guam, and the deadliest to occur on South Korean soil, surpassing the crash of Air China Flight 129 in 2002.

 The crash was the first fatal accident in Jeju Air's 19-year history.

 It is also the deadliest Boeing 737 accident of the 2020s, the joint-deadliest aviation occurrence involving a Boeing 737 Next Generation aircraft (tied with Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752), and the deadliest aviation accident to occur since Lion Air Flight 610 crashed in 2018.

Background

Aircraft

The aircraft involved was a Boeing 737-8AS manufactured in 2009, registered as HL8088, and was equipped with two CFM International CFM56-7B engines. The aircraft was first operated by Ryanair, before it was delivered to Jeju Air in 2017.

Passengers and crew

Of the 175 passengers, two were Thai nationals and the other 173 were South Korean.

 The oldest on board was a man born in 1946 while the youngest was born in 2021.

There were 82 men and 93 women.

Most of the passengers were returning home from a five-day long Christmas package tour to Bangkok, with the travel agency organizing the tour having chartered the plane.

 Thirteen passengers were reported to be active or former government officials on a provinical or local/municipal level, eight were current or former civil servants from Hwasun County, and five were administrative officers of the Jeonnam Provincial Office of Education.

At least 176 people were confirmed dead.

 Two survivors, both flight attendants, were rescued from the rear of the aircraft and were conscious. They sustained moderate to serious wounds and received medical treatment at separate hospitals in Mokpo before being transferred to a hospital in Seoul.

 Three occupants remained missing by nightfall, with search operations continuing into the night.

Accident

The aircraft departed from Suvarnabhumi Airport at 2:11 a.m. ICT (UTC+9).

The crash occurred at 09:07 as the aircraft attempted to land at Muan International Airport in South Korea. It overshot the runway while attempting a belly landing after its front landing gear failed to deploy.

 Video footage showed the aircraft skidding down the runway without its landing gear deployed before colliding with an embankment holding the ILS array and exploding.

Emergency services received multiple calls around 09:03,[20] and the fire response issued a level-3 emergency, its highest alert.

 According to the National Fire Agency, 1,562 personnel including 490 firefighters and 455 police officers were dispatched. The fire was extinguished within 43 minutes.

By 13:36 the firefighters had switched to search operations to recover bodies.[29] A temporary morgue was set up on site to handle the bodies recovered from the wreckage, and family members of the occupants were temporarily accommodated at the airport while they await for news from the crash.

At a press conference, Lee Jeong-hyun, South Korea's fire chief, said that the cause of the landing gear failure was believed to have been adverse weather combined with a bird strike.

 Six minutes before the crash, an warning from the airport traffic control issued a warning of a possible bird strike. A minute later, the pilot of the airplane declared a Mayday signal.

 Muan International Airport recorded the highest rate of bird strike incidence among the 14 regional airports in South Korea. Although the absolute numbers of strikes are small in statistical terms, the strike rate of 0.09% of flights is significantly higher than other major airports like Gimpo (0.018%) and Jeju (0.013%).