After the 179 people died in the Jeju Air crash on Sunday, South Korea’s acting president Choi Sang-mok ordered an emergency review of the whole country’s flight industry on Monday morning. This caused a big drop in Boeing shares.
On December 29, at 9:03 a.m. local time, Jeju Air flight 2216 crashed at South Korea’s Muan International Airport, killing 179 of the 181 people on board the twin-engine Boeing 737-800 who were coming from Bangkok, Thailand.
See: South Korea will check all Boeing planes as it tries to figure out what caused the crash that killed 179 people.
Choi Sang-mok, South Korea’s acting president, took office just three days ago, on December 27. He has now ordered an emergency inspection of all of South Korea’s airlines while authorities check all Boeing 737-800 planes separately.
Boeing BA +0.19% shares on the New York Stock Exchange fell 5% in premarket trading on Monday. They have lost 31% of their value so far this year.
In the terrible accident on Sunday, a Jeju Air plane tried to land without its landing gear, but instead crashed into a wall at Muan International Airport and caught fire. It was the deadliest plane crash ever seen in South Korea.
At 8:54 a.m. local time, air traffic control gave the Jeju Air plane permission to make an emergency landing at Muan International Airport, which is close to Gwangju, South Korea’s sixth-largest city. Just minutes earlier, they had given a warning about bird activity in the area.
Later, the government revealed that two flight attendants had survived the crash but were badly hurt. All 179 people who were still on the plane were reported to have died in the crash.
Since 2018, when Lion Air flight 610 crashed into the Java Sea and killed 189 people, this is the deadliest air crash anywhere in the world.
The biggest low-cost airline in South Korea is called Jeju Air. It was started in 2005 as a partnership between the South Korean conglomerate Aekyung Group and the government of Jeju island, which is off the southern coast of the Korean peninsula. Monday, shares of Jeju Air 089590 -8.65% dropped 9%.
Boeing is the world’s second-largest plane maker, after its main competitor Airbus. In 2024, it has been getting more and more attention since a panel on one of its 737 MAX 9 planes blew off on January 5, forcing an Alaska Airlines flight to make an emergency landing in Portland, Oregon.
