South Korea’s transport minister is resigning because he feels “heavy responsibility” for the Jeju Air crash that killed 179 people last month.
A Jeju Air aircraft carrying 181 passengers and crew crashed at the Muan international airport on 29 December in what was the country’s worst air disaster.
The plane failed to deploy its landing gear, landed on its belly, overshot the runway, rammed into a concrete wall, and burst into flames, killing everyone onboard except two crew members seated at the back.
“I feel heavy responsibility for this disaster,” Park Sang Woo said at a press conference on Tuesday, adding that he would find the right time to resign.
A week after the tragedy, South Korean authorities were still investigating the cause of the crash, with fire officials suggesting a bird strike or bad weather led to the accident.
Firefighters near the wreckage of a crashed passenger plane at Muan international airport (Getty)
Aviation experts have said the concrete embankment that the aircraft rammed into was too rigid and too close to the runway. It was after crashing headlong into that wall, designed to prop up a localiser antenna for guiding landings in poor visibility, that the plane disintegrated and caught fire.
Joo Jong Wan, the deputy transport minister for civil aviation, has acknowledged that the safety measures observed during the building of the wall were not sufficient, but maintained that they were in line with regulations in Korea and overseas.
A crane lifts the tail section during the salvage operation of the Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 aircraft which crashed and burst into flames at the Muan international airport in South Korea (YONHAP/AFP via Getty)
South Korean police investigating the incident raided the offices of Jeju Air and the Muan airport operator last week, securing evidence like the localiser and the communication records between the control tower and the pilot before the crash.
Lee Seung Yeol, head of the investigation team, said at the press briefing on Tuesday that they had found feathers on one of the engines recovered from the crash site and that there was video footage showing a bird strike.
The government, meanwhile, extended the shutdown of the Muan airport until 14 January.
Two Korean investigators departed for the US on Monday to work with the National Transportation Safety Board in recovering and analysing a flight data recorder that was damaged in the crash.
The flight data recorder, together with the cockpit voice recorder, forms the black box that holds critical information about the incident.
Mr Lee said it would take three days to extract the files from the data recorder and two more to do a preliminary analysis of the data.
