Horrifying images emerged from Muan County in South Korea on Sunday after a fiery plane crash took the lives of nearly all souls on board the affected aircraft.
As Reuters reports, 179 people lost their lives when the airliner in which they were traveling landed on its belly and skidded past the end of the runway at Muan International Airport, bursting into what immediately appeared to be an unsurvivable conflagration.
The Jeju Air flight at issue was making its way from Bangkok, Thailand with 175 passengers and six crew members on board when it made its landing approach just after 9 a.m. local time.
Local video footage showed the twin-engine Boeing aircraft skidding across the runway, with no landing gear evident.
It was then that the plane slammed into navigation infrastructure equipment and then a wall before exploding in a ball of fire and twisted debris, ejecting some of those on board.
As the BBC noted, authorities are probing what may have caused the crash, with some suggesting that a bird strike combined with unfavorable weather conditions may have been to blame.
Flight and voice recorders from the aircraft have reportedly been recovered, and investigators are hopeful that they will provide key insights into what ultimately caused this disaster.
The force of the plane's impact as well as its fiery aftermath created conditions in which virtually nobody on board was able to survive.
Muan fire department chief Lee Jeong-hyun explained the extent of the devastation, saying that the plane's tail section was still identifiable, but “one cannot recognize the shape of the rest of the plane.”
Authorities are still in the process of attempting to identify bodies of the victims, who are said to have ranged in age from three years old to 78.
Incredibly, though 179 individuals perished in the incident, two members of the flight crew, a male and a female, were pulled from the wreckage and taken for treatment.
The BBC chronicled the excruciating scene at the airport, where families of those suspected to have perished in the crash gathered for news about their loved ones.
A man named Maeng Gi-su revealed that his nephew and the nephew's two sons had been traveling to celebrate a milestone in the life of one of the young men, and he lamented in the aftermath of the crash, “I can't believe the entire family has just disappeared. My heart aches so much,” encapsulating the sadness now felt by so many who have been impacted by this tragedy.
