A jetliner skidded off a runway, slammed into a concrete fence and burst into flames Sunday in South Korea after its landing gear apparently failed to deploy. All but two of the 181 people aboard were killed in one of the country’s worst aviation disasters, officials said. The Boeing 737-800 operated by Jeju Air plane arrived from Bangkok and crashed while attempting to land in the town of Muan, about 290 kilometers (180 miles) south of Seoul. Footage of the crash aired by South Korean television showed the plane skidding across the airstrip at high speed, evidently with its landing gear still closed, and slamming into the wall, triggering an explosion and generating plumes of thick, black smoke. The crash killed 179 people, the South Korean fire agency said. Emergency workers pulled two crew members to safety. They were conscious and did not appear to have any life-threatening injuries, health officials said. The chief of the Muan fire station, Lee Jeong-hyeon, told a televised briefing that the plane was completely destroyed, with only the tail assembly still recognizable in the wreckage. Officials were investigating the cause of the crash, including whether the aircraft was struck by birds, Lee said. The control tower issued a warning about birds to the plane shortly before it intended to land and gave the crew permission to land in a different area, Transport Ministry officials said. The crew sent out a distress signal shortly before the crash, officials said. Investigators retrieved the jet's flight data and cockpit voice recorders, said senior Transport Ministry official Joo Jong-wan. He said it may take months to complete the probe into the crash. The runway will be closed until Jan. 1, the ministry said. Video of the crash indicated that the pilots did not deploy flaps or slats to slow the aircraft, suggesting a possible hydraulic failure, and they did not manually lower the landing gear, suggesting they did not have time, said John Cox, a retired airline pilot and CEO of Safety Operating Systems in St. Petersburg, Florida. Despite that, the jetliner was under control and traveling in a straight line, and damage and injuries likely would have been minimized if not for a barrier being so close to the runway, Cox said. “It’s all in one piece. Everything is coming along fine until it hits that wall, at which point it disintegrates into a catastrophe,” he said.   Another aviation expert said videos showed the aircraft had used up much of the runway before touching down. With little braking ability, the aircraft skidded atop its engine cowlings, said Ross “Rusty” Aimer, CEO of Aero Consulting Experts. “It's basically like skidding on ice,” he said. The Boeing 737-800 is a "proven airplane" that belongs to a different class of aircraft than the Boeing 737 Max jetliner that was linked to fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019, added Alan Price, a former chief pilot at Delta Air Lines and now a consultant. More than 4,500 of the planes are in service around the world, according to the aviation analytics company Cirium. One of the survivors was being treated for fractures to his ribs, shoulder blade and upper spine, said Ju Woong, director of the Ewha Womans University Seoul Hospital. Ju said the man, whose name was not released, told doctors he “woke up to find (himself) rescued.” Details on the other survivor were not immediately available. The passengers were predominantly South Korean and included two people from Thailand. Officials identified 88 of them in the hours after the crash, the fire agency said. Thailand’s prime minister, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, expressed condolences to the families of those aboard the plane in a post on X. Paetongtarn said she ordered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to provide assistance. Boonchuay Duangmanee, the father of a Thai passenger, told The Associated Press that his daughter, Jongluk, had been working in a factory in South Korea for several years and returned to Thailand to visit her family. Putin apologizes for 'tragic incident' but stops short of saying Azerbaijani plane shot down "I never thought that this would be the last time we would see each other forever,” he said. Kerati Kijmanawat, the director of Thailand's airports, confirmed in a statement that Jeju Air flight 7C 2216 departed from Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport with no reports of anything abnormal aboard the aircraft or on the runway. Jeju Air in a statement expressed its “deep apology” over the crash and said it will do its “utmost to manage the aftermath of the accident.” In a televised news conference, the company's president, Kim E-bae, bowed deeply with other senior company officials as he apologized to bereaved families and said he feels “full responsibility” for the crash. He said the company had not identified any mechanical problems with the aircraft following regular checkups and that he would wait for the results of government investigations. Family members wailed as officials announced the names of some victims at a lounge in the Muan airport. Boeing said in a statement on X that it was in contact with Jeju Air and was ready to support the company in dealing with the crash. The crash happened as South Korea is embroiled in a political crisis triggered by President Yoon Suk Yeol’s stunning imposition of martial law and ensuing impeachment. South Korean lawmakers on Friday impeached acting President Han Duck-soo and suspended his duties, leading Deputy Prime Minister Choi Sang-mok to take over. Choi, who traveled to the site in Muan, called for officials to use all available resources to identify the dead as soon as possible. The government declared Muan a special disaster zone and designated a weeklong national mourning period. Ukrainian drone attack linked to Azerbaijani plane crash, says Russian aviation chief Yoon’s office said his chief secretary, Chung Jin-suk, presided over an emergency meeting between senior presidential staff to discuss the crash and reported the details to Choi. Yoon expressed condolences to the victims in a Facebook post. In Rome’s St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis said he joined in “prayer for the survivors and the dead.” U.S. President Joe Biden said the United States was ready to offer “any necessary assistance.” The Muan crash is one of the deadliest disasters in South Korea’s aviation history. The last time South Korea suffered a large-scale air disaster was in 1997, when a Korean Airlines plane crashed in Guam, killing 228 people on board. In 2013, an Asiana Airlines plane crash-landed in San Francisco, killing three and injuring about 200. Sunday’s accident was also one of the worst landing disasters since a July 2007 crash that killed all 187 people on board and 12 others on the ground when an Airbus A320 slid off a slick airstrip in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and hit a nearby building, according to data compiled by the Flight Safety Foundation, a nonprofit group aimed at improving air safety. In 2010, 158 people died when an Air India Express aircraft overshot a runway in Mangalore, India, and plummeted into a gorge before erupting into flames, according to the safety foundation.

A LATAM Airlines plane taking off from Lima’s international airport struck a firetruck on the runway and caught fire Friday. Authorities said the plane’s passengers and crew were all safe, but two firefighters in the truck were killed. Lima Airport Partners, the company that operates Jorge Chávez International Airport, said in a tweet that operations at the facility had been suspended. There were 102 passengers and six crew members aboard the Airbus A320neo. “Our teams are providing the necessary care to all passengers, who are in good condition,” the company said. Luis Ponce La Jara, general commander of the fire department, said two firefighters were killed and one was injured when the truck they were in was struck by the plane. Both the plane and the firetruck were in motion when they collided. President Pedro Castillo expressed his condolences to the families of the firefighters in a tweet. Flight LA2213 was taking off from Lima’s main airport en route to the Peruvian city of Juliaca. Videos on social media showed smoke coming from a large plane on the runway. Read more: Small plane crashes into Tanzania's Lake Victoria, 19 dead LATAM Airlines said it lamented the death of the firefighters and would provide flexibility to reprogram flights to affected passengers at no extra cost. But it said it did not know why the firetruck was on the runway. “No emergency was reported on the flight It was a flight that was in optimal conditions to take off, it had authorization to take off and it encountered a truck on the runway and we don’t know what the truck was doing there,” said Manuel van Oordt, general manager of LATAM Airlines Peru. “We have to investigate and establish why it was there.” The Prosecutor’s Office in Callao, where the airport is located, said an investigation into the cause of the accident had been opened. According to the fire department, the incident was registered at 3:25 p.m. and four rescue units were mobilized. Read more: Plane crash kills 2, burns homes in California neighborhood Aviation authorities said operations at Jorge Chávez International Airport were suspended until 1 p.m. local time Saturday. Flights would be direct to other airports in the meantime.

A Chinese passenger jet left the runway upon takeoff and caught fire in western China on Thursday morning, and several people were injured. Tibet Airlines said it happened at 8:09 a.m. (0009 GMT) as the flight to the city of Nyingchi in the Tibetan Autonomous Region was preparing to take off from the western city of Chongqing. Also read:5 dead after small plane crashes into soda truck in Haiti The Airbus A319-115 jet had 113 passengers and nine flight crew onboard, all of whom were safely evacuated with some taken to a hospital with minor injuries, the airline said in an statement. The plane itself had fire damage, it said. “In the process of taking off, the flight crew discovered an abnormality with the aircraft and stopped the takeoff, after which the aircraft left the runway," the statement said. Also read: Search finds 49,000 pieces of plane in China Eastern crash The incident follows the crash of a Chinese Eastern Boeing 737-800 in southeastern China on March 21 in which all 132 people on board were killed. That accident, in which the plane went into a sudden nosedive and slammed into the ground in a mountainous area, remains under investigation.