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.

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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?”

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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”.