Closing summary
South Korea’s acting president, Choi Sang-mok, has ordered an emergency safety inspection of the country’s entire airline operations, while authorities plan a separate check of all Boeing 737-800s, after 179 people died in a Jeju Air crash involving the aircraft on Sunday.
141 of the 179 victims have now been identified using DNA analysis or fingerprint collection. Officials are continuing to examine the debris at the scene at Muan international airport in South Korea.
Many families are still gathered at the airport, waiting for their loved ones to be officially identified and for the bodies of their relatives to be released.
Some families are reportedly frustrated at the lack of regular updates from Jeju Air and are upset about how long the identification process is taking. They are calling for more support from the government.
The Jeju Air plane that crash-landed was found to have operated 13 flights in 48 hours prior to the incident, Yonhap news agency reported. Jeju Air passengers have reportedly been cancelling tickets for future flights en masse.
Officials said the crash could have been caused by a bird strike and weather conditions – or a combination of those and other factors – but the exact cause is not yet known.
Experts say many questions remain, including why the plane appeared to be travelling so fast and why its landing gear did not appear to be down when it skidded down the runway and into a concrete embankment.
South Korea has begun seven days of national mourning, with flags flown at half-mast.
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Updated
Raphael Rashid, who has been reporting on the Jeju Air crash from Seoul, has written a piece about how the tragedy unfolded yesterday and how bereaved families are struggling to come to terms with the the deadliest air accident ever in South Korea. Here is an extract from his story, which you can read in full here.
As evening fell, a man in his 60s kept returning to the family support desk, his son by his side. His wife had been travelling with her sisters-in-law on the flight.
While the sisters-in-law’s bodies had been identified, his wife’s name was still not on the list. Again and again, they checked the registry of names, his son repeatedly collapsing in tears.
The following morning, after spending the night in makeshift tents at the airport lounge, relatives of passengers not yet identified waited for news.
A middle-aged man and woman kept their gaze fixed through the fence, where remnants of the plane – seats, gates and twisted metal parts – were still scattered across the field.
