South Korean police raided offices of Jeju Air and operator of Muan International Airport on Thursday as they step up investigation into fatal plane crash Boeing 737-800 which killed 179 people.
The flight carried 181 passengers and crew from Thailand to South Korea on Sunday when it made a call for help and landed on its belly before crashing into a barrier, killing all but two flight attendants.
Authorities on Thursday conducted search and seizure operations at Muan Airport where Flight 2216 crashed, at a regional aviation office in the southwest city and at the Jeju Air office in Seoul, the capital, police said.
Jeju Air general manager Kim E-bae has also been banned from leaving the country as the investigation continues, police said separately.
“The police plan to quickly and rigorously determine the cause and responsibilities of this accident in accordance with the law and principles,” the police said in a press release sent to AFP.
At Muan airport on Thursday, soldiers, police and investigators in white suits were still roaming the crash site, while orange-robed monks held prayer ceremonies nearby.
Inside the airport, the stairs were covered in colorful post-it notes left by mourners.
“Honey, I miss you so much,” one said.
“Even though you have faced times of loneliness and pain in death, may you now fly away like a butterfly,” another reads.
Kim Hong-Ji / REUTERS
Relatives also left flowers and food near the crash site, including tteokguk – a rice cake soup traditionally enjoyed in South Korea on New Year’s Day – as they said goodbye, many in tears.
Star chefs featured in Netflix’s hit cooking competition “Culinary Class Wars,” including Ahn Yu-seong, joined volunteers in Muan this week to prepare meals for victims’ families.
And across the country, people were paying for their coffee at the airport cafe remotely so that victims’ families, who had been camped out in the lounge since Sunday waiting for news, could drink for free.
Other bodies were handed over to families on Thursday to prepare for funerals, the Lands Ministry said.
Officials initially cited a bird strike as a possible cause of the crash, and have since said the investigation is also examining the role of a concrete barrier at the end of the runway.
Dramatic video shows the plane colliding with him before bursting into flames.
Yonhap reported that Muan Airport’s arrest warrant was approved for professional negligence resulting in death, citing officials.
“Police are in the process of obtaining evidence related to the legitimacy of the airport locator,” Yonhap said, referring to the concrete wall at the end of the runway housing an antenna array.
They are also looking for recordings of communication between the control tower and the pilot shortly before the plane crash, the statement added.
The country’s airports are being inspected to check for other similar locators, the Land Ministry said in a statement.
Some experts have suggested the disaster might have been less deadly if the installation had not been concrete.
“Key to unraveling this mystery”
South Korea also announced it would inspect all Boeing 737-800s operated by its carriers, focusing on the landing gear, which appears to have malfunctioned in Sunday’s crash.
South Korea’s acting president Choi Sang-mok said Thursday that “immediate action” must be taken if the investigation reveals problems with the plane model.
Authorities previously said 101 planes of the same model were operated by six different airlines.
“As the public is very concerned about the same model of aircraft involved in the accident, the Ministry of Transportation and relevant agencies should conduct a thorough inspection of the operation, maintenance, education and training,” Choi said Thursday.
It is the worst air disaster to occur on South Korean soil.
Kim Hong-Ji / REUTERS
South Korean authorities have completed initial extraction of data from the cockpit voice recorder, but the flight data recorder was damaged and was to be sent to the United States for analysis, officials said Wednesday.
Investigators say it was not possible to locally decode the damaged flight data recorder, which is missing a crucial connector, BBC News reported.
“I think the cockpit voice recorder, if they’re able to play it, will be the key to unraveling this mystery,” Robert Sumwalt, former chairman of the NTSB, told CBS News.
Jeju Air said the accident was not due to “maintenance issues,” according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency and aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas. told BBC News that South Korean airlines were widely considered to follow “industry best practices” and that the aircraft and Jeju Air had an “excellent safety record.”