The deadliest accident in aviation history occurred in 1977, when two Boeing 747 jumbo jets collided on a foggy runway on the Spanish island of Tenerife, killing 583 of the 644 people on board the planes. Spanish investigators blamed the captain of the KLM 747 for taking off without clearance from air traffic controllers.
Several passenger plane crashes have occurred worldwide this year, including a Wednesday morning Azerbaijan Airlines wreck that has left dozens feared dead.
The acting president ordered an emergency safety inspection of the airline operation system as investigators worked to identify victims and find out what caused the country's deadliest air disaster.
Jeju Air Flight 7C2216 crashed in South Korea on Sunday, killing 179 people on board.
Investigators will try to determine what happened on the plane, including how its mechanical systems were functioning and which actions the pilots took.
On Dec. 29, all passengers aboard a flight on South Korean carrier Jeju Air were killed when a plane skidded down a runway and burst into flames. The incident happened at Muan International Airport (MWX) in the country's southernmost region.
The Jeju Air crash in South Korea is an outlier in a country considered to be a gold standard for airline safety.
South Korean officials are looking for the cause of a passenger jet crash that killed 179 people, in one of the deadliest disasters in the country’s aviation history.
The U.S. is sending investigators to South Korea to probe the deadly plane crash that killed 178 people as officials comb through over 600 body parts.
The Jeju Air 737 crash in South Korea on Sunday that killed all but two of the people onboard was in many respects as baffling as it was tragic. Given the scant information currently available, it’s hard even to piece together a coherent picture of what happened.
Families wept and wailed as officials read off the names of the victims who died on Sunday, Dec. 29 at Muan International Airport, where the crash occurred, according to CNN and NBC News. Only two people, a pair of flight attendants, are said to have survived the crash, which was flying in from Bangkok, Thailand.