A plane carrying 181 people has crashed in South Korea, killing all but two people on board.

It’s the country’s worst domestic civil aviation disaster, and a special disaster zone has been declared.

Here’s everything we know.

Follow latest: South Korea plane crash

What happened?

Around midnight UK time (9am Sunday local time) a Jeju Air plane carrying 181 people attempted to crash-land at Muan International Airport, about 180 miles south of Seoul.

On its second attempt, it veered off the runway and crashed into a wall, quickly becoming engulfed in smoke and fire.

It did not have its landing gear deployed and was travelling at speed before crashing, footage appears to show.

What caused the crash?

A bird strike is one of the potential causes being considered by officials.

South Korea’s transport ministry said the plane was sent a warning about a bird strike from the control tower before the fatal crash.

The pilot sent out a distress signal shortly before the accident. They had been given permission to land in a different area than usual.

The News1 agency reported that a passenger texted a relative to say a bird was stuck in the wing of the plane.

Their final message was said to have been: “Should I say my last words?”

Read More:
Airline’s bosses face tough questions
South Korea plane crash kills 179 people, two survive

Witnesses on the ground reported hearing a “loud explosion” and seeing sparks in the plane’s engine before it crashed.

Officials are also looking at the weather conditions at the time of the crash.

As footage shows the landing gear was not deployed when the plane was attempting to crash land, a landing gear failure is also likely to be investigated.

The plane’s black box and cockpit voice recording device have been retrieved, but decrypting them could take more than a month, officials have said.

What have experts said?

Former pilot Terry Tozer told Sky News that even in the event of a bird strike and the loss of one engine, the pilots should have still been able to control the plane.

“They fly on one [engine] quite well,” he said.

“The regulations require a passenger aircraft to sustain an engine failure at the most critical point of take-off and still continue the take-off on the remaining engine.

“So to be already airborne on one engine, and I’ve done it, and we’ve all done it in the simulator, it really is not a major problem. The problem tends to occur if the crew has lots of other problems and they become overloaded.”

He added: “The flight data recorder will show what systems were operating, what the crew did, what they selected.

“Normally with an engine failure, you would expect to go into the hold perhaps, go through an emergency checklist, and figure out what you can do and what your options are.

“I’m still very puzzled by the fact that this aircraft is shown on the runway at high speed and without the undercarriage. I can’t think why that would be.

“It looks to me that there was an event that created problems for the crew, that, for whatever reason, they were unable to deal with.”

Aviation expert Sally Gethin told Sky News the pilots could have been left with a “split-second decision” in the event of a bird strike.

“Obviously the worst case scenario with a bird strike, which is ingrained into all airport safety procedures around the world, is being ingested into the engine,” she said.

“It’s a known, potentially catastrophic, factor in air travel.

“If indeed it was a bird strike, it possibly impacted one engine, but possibly knocked out hydraulics, which in turn would have impacted the use of the landing gear.

“The pilots would have had to make very split-second decisions on what their options would be in a case like that.

“They would have decided they didn’t have enough time to divert to another aerodrome, and so they took the decision to land at that particular one.

“Then, of course, they ran out of runway and hit a buffer wall right at the end, which caused the actual eruption.”

Why was there a wall at the end of the runway?

The plane exploded seemingly while colliding with a solid wall at the end of the runway, and experts have questioned why it was there.

Aviation expert David Learmount said all of the passengers would have survived without the concrete wall.

He said: “When you saw it slide off the end of the runway, nothing was on fire. The aircraft was completely under control.

“The actual touchdown itself, the aircraft was perfectly wings level. The aircraft had been handled very, very nicely.”

“The aeroplane was fine up until the point it hit the wall. If there had been no wall there, everybody would be alive now.”

What do we know about the flight?

Jeju Air flight 7C2216, a Boeing 737-800 jet, was on its way back from Bangkok, Thailand, at the time of the crash.

There were 173 South Koreans and two Thai people on board as well as six crew members, according to local media.

The plane followed a flight path northeast over Taiwan, according to tracking data from Flight Radar.

South Korea’s transport ministry said the plane was manufactured in 2009.

Jeju Air said the plane had no previous record of accidents, and that there were no early signs of the plane malfunctioning.

What is Jeju Air and what is its safety record like?

Jeju Air is South Korea’s largest low-cost airline, carrying more than 12.3 million passengers last year.

Formed in 2005, the company is named after Jeju Island – located to the south of the Korean Peninsula – which is home to the airline’s headquarters.

The company has more than 3,000 employees and more than 40 aircraft, most of them Boeing 737-800s – a model widely used around the world.

South Korea is well-regarded in safety terms, and is rated Category 1 in the US Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) International Aviation Safety Assessment Program.

Jeju Air received a safety grade of “A” – “very good” – in the latest South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport’s annual review of domestic airlines, according to the New York Times.

A history of the Boeing 737-800

The plane was launched in 1994 by US company Boeing to replace its older 737 models, and it competes with the Airbus A320. It was used in a commercial flight for the first time since 1997.

Nearly 5,000 have been sold worldwide since the launch of the 737-800, with Ryanair, United Airlines and American Airlines among the largest operators of the planes.

Often described as the “workhorse” of major commercial airlines due to its widespread use, the aircraft has a strong safety record.

While Boeing 737-800s have been involved in previous fatal crashes, most have been put down to poor weather conditions, human error, or other factors.

The last fatal crash involving a 737-800 was China Eastern Airlines Flight 5735 in March 2022, when a plane crashed in Wuzhou, China, after descending steeply mid-flight.

The crash is still under investigation by China’s civil aviation authority, though multiple reports have suggested the plane was deliberately crashed.

Other previous fatal crashes include in March 2016, when a Flydubai flight landing at Rostov-on-Don, Russia, crashed on the final approach in inclement weather, killing all 62 people on board.

More than 150 people were also killed in an Air India Express flight in May 2010, when a 737-800 overran the runway at Mangalore airport.

A report later found that the plane’s captain had continued an unstabilised approach, despite three calls from the first officer to initiate a “go-around”.

This is South Korea’s worst domestic civil aviation disaster.

The video from the ground sees the plane exploding into a fireball.

A local fire official said the crash had likely been caused by a bird strike and weather conditions.

But footage shows the landing gear hadn’t deployed as it skidded on the runway.

Live updates: South Korea plane crash

Experts said South Korea’s aviation industry has a solid track record for safety and this was the first fatal accident Jeju Air had experienced since it was launched.

In a press conference, the chief executive of the company said the plane that crashed did not have a previous record of accidents.

Kim E-bae also added there were no early signs of the plane malfunctioning.

He has vowed to cooperate with the government in investigating the cause of the accident.

And he can expect tough questioning – this is a catastrophic crash and the many bereaved families will be looking for answers.

Read More:
Everything we know about deadly crash
South Korea plane crash kills 179 people, two survive

Just two days ago, a passenger claiming to have travelled on the same plane said it had an engine shutdown as people were boarding.

According to Yonhap News Agency, a passenger who boarded the Jeju Air Flight 7C2216 said: “I was on the same plane at the time and the engine shut off several times.”

He said he’d set off from Muan International Airport for Bangkok and became worried: “I told the flight attendants and they said there was no problem.”

Other passengers, he claimed, also had concerns and the plane was delayed for an hour “due to airport issues.”

An Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed, killing 38 people, was damaged while flying over Russia “due to shooting from the ground”, the country’s president has said.

President Ilham Aliyev said he believed that the plane, which crashed around two miles from Aktau in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, was not shot down intentionally.

However, he accused some circles in Russia of wanting to cover up the truth about the nature of the crash.

The Embraer 190 passenger jet was en route from Azerbaijan‘s capital of Baku to the Russian city of Grozny in the North Caucasus when it changed course.

It crashed in Kazakhstan while making an attempt to land after flying east across the Caspian Sea, killing 38 people and injuring all of the other 29 survivors.

In an interview with Azerbaijani television, Mr Aliyev said the plane was damaged “from the outside” over Russian territory and that “electronic warfare systems” put the plane “out of control”.

“At the same time, as a result of fire from the ground, the tail of the plane was also severely damaged,” he said.

“The fact that the fuselage is riddled with holes indicates that the theory of the plane hitting a flock of birds, which was brought up by someone, is completely removed from the agenda.”

He added: “Unfortunately, however, some circles in Russia preferred to put forward this theory. Another regrettable and surprising moment for us was that official Russian agencies put forward theories about the explosion of some gas cylinder on board the plane.

“In other words, this clearly showed that the Russian side wanted to cover up the issue, which, of course, is unbecoming of anyone.”

He said the plane was hit “by accident” and ruled out a “deliberate act of terror”.

However, he criticised Russian authorities for not taking responsibility for the crash.

“Admitting the guilt, apologising in a timely manner to Azerbaijan, which is considered a friendly country, and informing the public about this – all these were measures and steps that should have been taken,” he said.

“Unfortunately, for the first three days, we heard nothing from Russia except for some absurd theories.”

On Saturday, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin apologised to his Azerbaijani counterpart for what he called a “tragic incident” – but stopped short of taking responsibility.

The Kremlin said in a statement on Saturday that air defence systems were firing near Grozny because of a Ukrainian drone strike, but stopped short of saying one of these downed the plane.

According to a Kremlin readout of a call, the Russian president apologised to Mr Aliyev “for the fact that the tragic incident occurred in Russian airspace”.

The White House said early indications suggest the plane could have been brought down by Russia,

Two US military officials told Sky News’ partner network NBC News that America has intelligence indicating Russia may have misidentified the aircraft as a drone and shot it down.

In the days following the crash, Azerbaijan Airlines blamed “physical and technical interference” and announced the suspension of flights to several Russian airports.

If proven, the plane crashed after being hit by Russian air defences, it would be the second deadly aviation incident linked to the Kremlin’s conflict with Ukraine.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by a Russian missile according to investigators, killing all 298 people aboard, in 2014.