South Korea orders airline safety inspections after Jeju Air crash

South Korea's acting president, Choi Sang-mok, has ordered an emergency safety inspection of the country's entire airline operation system following the deadliest air disaster in the country.

All 175 passengers and four of the six crew members were killed when the Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 aircraft belly-landed and exploded into a fireball after skidding off the end of the runway at Muan International Airport on Sunday.

The country is observing seven days of mourning for the victims, five of whom were children, with the youngest being a three-year-old boy.

South Korean authorities are still trying to determine the cause of Sunday's crash, which occurred days after an Azerbaijan Airlines flight crashed in Kazakhstan, killing 38 of the 67 people on board.

“Even before the final results are out, we ask that officials transparently disclose the accident investigation process and promptly inform the bereaved families,” Mr Choi told a disaster management meeting in Seoul on Monday.

“As soon as the accident recovery is conducted, the Transport Ministry is requested to conduct an emergency safety inspection of the entire aircraft operation system to prevent recurrence of aircraft accidents,” he said. The ministry said authorities were considering whether to conduct a special inspection of all 101 Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by South Korean airlines.

The order came as Jeju Air reported that another of its Boeing 737-800 aircraft had to return to Seoul's Gimpo International Airport because of a problem with its landing gear.

Soon after Flight 7C101 from Seoul to Jeju Island took off at 6.37am, "a signal indicating a landing gear issue was detected on the aircraft's monitoring system", airline official Song Kyung-hoon told a news conference.

"At 6:57am, the captain communicated with ground control, and after taking additional measures, the landing gear returned to normal operation. However, the decision was made to return to the airport for a thorough inspection of the aircraft," he said.

The Jeju Air plane that crashed on Sunday was arriving from the Thai capital Bangkok. As the pilots made a scheduled approach, they told air traffic control that the aircraft had suffered a bird strike, shortly after the control tower gave them a warning birds were spotted in the vicinity, Transport Ministry officials said.

Transport Ministry officials said the jet's flight data recorder was recovered but appeared to have sustained some damage, and it was not yet clear whether the data was sufficiently intact to be analysed.

The crash killed mostly local residents who were returning from holidays in Thailand, as well as two Thai nationals. Investigators were still trying to identify some of the victims' remains on Monday as anguished families waited in the airport terminal.

Muan airport has been closed until Thursday, but the rest of the country's international and regional airports, including the main Incheon International Airport, were operating normally.