The offices of low-cost airline Jeju Air were raided this Thursday after the deadly crash of one of its planes last Sunday.
South Korean police raided the offices of Jeju Air and the operator of Muan International Airport on Thursday as part of the investigation into the accident that killed 179 people on Sunday.
The Boeing 737-800 operated by the Korean low-cost carrier was carrying 181 people from Thailand – mostly South Korean tourists returning from vacation – to Muan when it made an emergency landing, hitting a barrier in end of track and burst into flames.
Only two crew members survived the accident.
The airport, the Jeju regional aviation office in Muan and the company’s office in the capital Seoul were all raided.
“In relation to the plane crash…a search and seizure operation is being carried out from 9 a.m. (1 a.m. CET) on January 2 at three locations”police said in a statement Thursday.
Black boxes found
Earlier this week, relatives and friends of South Korea’s plane crash victims gathered at the site to pay tribute to their loved ones on New Year’s Day, as authorities said they had extracted data from one of the black boxes recovered in order to find the exact cause of the accident.
Videos of the accident show that Flight 2216 attempted to land without its landing gear extended. The footage also shows that the plane apparently had an engine problem in addition to the landing gear malfunction.
Investigators say the pilot was warned by air traffic controllers about the possibility of a collision with birds and that the plane issued a distress signal before crashing.
The Transportation Ministry said Wednesday it had completed the process of extracting data from the cockpit voice recorder, one of two black boxes found in the plane’s wreckage. The ministry added that a damaged flight data recorder will be sent to the United States for analysis.
The transport ministry said authorities had completed the process of identifying the 179 victims. He added that the government had already handed over 11 bodies to relatives.
Authorities said they would examine whether the airport’s locator – a set of antennas housed in a concrete fence at the end of the runway and intended to guide planes when landing – should have been built with lighter materials that would break more easily on impact.
The country has been in national mourning for seven days.
