SEOUL and LONDON — South Korean authorities were working Monday to verify the identities of more than three dozen of the 179 people who died on a Jeju Air flight. crash land at an airport on Sunday.
The bodies of 141 people were identified by fingerprints or DNA, but 38 of the dead remained unidentified, local authorities said.
After the fatal crash, when the Boeing 737 skidded off a runway, hit a wall and burst into flames, officials recovered flight data recorders from the wreckage and were releasing information about the two dead and survivors. There were six crew members and 175 passengers on board.
Mourners react near the site of a Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 series plane that crashed and burst into flames at Muan International Airport, 288 kilometers southwest of Seoul, South Korea, on December 30, 2024.
Jung Yeon-je/AFP via Getty Images
Acting President Choi Sang-mo, who has been leading the country since Friday, ordered an emergency safety inspection of South Korea’s air fleet and operations.
The two survivors, a man and a woman who were both crew members, were not life-threatening, officials said. The man was being treated in an intensive care unit and the woman was recovering, authorities said.
Flight 7C2216 departed Thailand’s Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport shortly before dawn on Monday, according to flight tracker Flightradar24.
As the plane approached South Korea’s Muan International Airport at around 9:00 a.m., the flight control tower warned of a bird strike, Korea’s Ministry of Land Infrastructure and Transport said Sunday.
A minute after that warning, a pilot sent a distress signal to May, after which the tower cleared the plane to land, the ministry said.
Firefighters and recovery teams work as a Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 series plane crashed and burst into flames at Muan International Airport in Muan, about 288 kilometers southwest of Seoul, South Korea, on December 30, 2024.
Jung Yeon-je/AFP via Getty Images
The official death toll given by the National Fire Agency rose steadily in the hours following the crash. Late Sunday, local authorities said all but two of the 181 people on board had died in the crash.
The plane’s voice and data recorders, or “black boxes,” were recovered from the wreckage, the Air and Rail Investigation Board said. The flight data recorder was found partially damaged and the cockpit voice recorder was recovered intact, officials said.
Mourners pay their respects at the memorial altar for the victims of the Jeju Air plane crash at Muan Sports Park in South Korea on December 30, 2024.
Jung Yeon-je/AFP via Getty Images
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said Sunday it would send an investigative team — likely to include members of Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration — to assist South Korean officials. The results of that investigation will be published by the Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board of the Republic of Korea, or ARAIB.
Efforts were being made to speed up the identification of the remaining 38 dead, but some bodies were too badly damaged to use fingerprints.
Others were the bodies of minors whose prints were not on file for comparison, officials said. According to the flight manifest, the youngest passenger on board was 3 years old. Five children under the age of 10 were registered on the flight.
Jeju Air, which operates an all-Boeing fleet, is a popular low-cost carrier in South Korea. The airline operated around 217 flights a day and carried more than 12 million people during 2023.
ABC News’ Sam Sweeney, Hakyung Kate Lee, Jack Moore, Will Gretsky, Victoria Beaule and Joe Simonetti contributed to this report.
