Muan, South Korea — Muan International Airport looks like any other airport during the holidays. Its car park is filled with hundreds of cars while the doors to the departure and arrival gates are bustling with activity.
Yet it’s nothing like any other airport, and there’s no holiday spirit on show. It’s been two days since the airport paused all of its operations after a deadly passenger plane crash on Sunday left only two survivors out of a total of 181 passengers and crew. Jeju Air Flight 2216 from Thailand to South Korea crashed into a concrete barrier and was immediately engulfed in a fireball after an emergency belly landing on the Muan airport runway.
Inside the airport, in the country’s South Jeolla province, is a sea of people wearing black, resembling a South Korean funeral. Families and friends huddle around each other, amid tears and wails of sorrow.
They are waiting to receive the remains of their loved ones, to be united with them one last time.
Ki Hwe-man, 37, travelled for more than five hours from the northern city of Paju after hearing that his uncle was one of the victims of the plane crash. He remembers his late uncle as a man of faith and as a friend.
“I used to always kick around a soccer ball when I was young, and my uncle would visit our home often to see us. He was the only adult during our family gatherings to come play with the kids,” Ki recalls. “He was always bright and an exemplary adult. He’s someone I aspire to become one day.”
While immediate family members of the victims have stayed at the airport in makeshift tents and benches since Sunday, large numbers of relatives and close friends from all around the country started to gather at the airport the next day to grieve alongside them.
Out of the 179 dead, five victims are yet to be identified.
Many of the passengers were holidaying in Thailand, including 41 members of a package tour to Bangkok sold by a local travel agency. The oldest person was 78 while the youngest was three years old.
“Just a day before my sister left on her trip, she visited our mother’s home in Gwangju to give her Christmas presents,” remembers a middle-aged man getting fresh air outside the airport, who lost his sister and brother-in-law in the crash. “After making her try out new clothes, she told our mother that she would come back soon.”
He reminisces about how his sister, who was younger than him was the one who brought the family together after their father passed away last year.
“She was the one who suggested our trip to Yeosu this past summer and to Daecheon in the fall. She took care of our ill father during his last days. We took courage from her,” he says, before walking away, overcome with emotion.
A nationwide period of mourning has been announced for seven days with memorial sites set up in cities across the country. Less than 10km (6.2 miles) away from the Muan airport, a memorial altar was set up at the city’s sport complex to honour the victims.
Jeon Myung-hwan came down from Seoul to bid his best friend a last farewell.
“My friend and his wife were on their retirement trip, and we even talked on the phone last week. We talked about going on a trip of our own soon,” Jeon tells Al Jazeera with a trembling voice.
Having met in middle school in their hometown of Gwangyang just a couple of hours east of Muan, the two friends would get together at least once a year along with their other friends.
“We even got married around the same time, so our families often met and went on trips together. He was gentle and quiet, but he always looked out for others like a big brother,” Jeon recalls.
As his friend’s wife is yet to be identified by search efforts back at the airport, her name isn’t at the funeral altar with the other victims’ names.
“It’s sad to see that my friend is not next to his wife on the altar,” Jeon says. “I hope he’s at peace in heaven next to his wife.”
On Tuesday, after two full days of recovery efforts, families were able to start funerals as the first set of bodies were returned. However, families at the airport have voiced their frustration at the slow response from authorities and raised concerns about holes in their leadership.
Park Han-shin, the representative of the families, even told reporters gathered at Muan airport that he “wouldn’t fully trust the authorities anymore” after he claimed that they were too busy tossing the blame between each other.
South Korea is currently led by its third president in just a month’s time. President Yoon Suk Yeol was stripped from his presidential duties following his martial law declaration at the start of the month. Prime Minister Han Duk-soo, who was next in line, was voted out from his presidential role after just two weeks, leaving Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok to juggle national disasters, a polarised political arena, and an historic economic fallout as the current acting president.
Choi’s order of an emergency safety inspection of the country’s entire airline operation includes a special inspection of all 101 Boeing 737-800 aircraft — the model involved in Sunday’s crash — operated by South Korean airliners, focusing on the maintenance record of key components.
While a bird strike was mentioned early on as a key factor in the accident, experts have questioned the extent of this theory being the only cause of the accident. The aeroplane’s cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder have been gathered by authorities for further analysis.
During its investigations, South Korean officials will need to look at questions such as the speed of the plane during landing, its unopened flaps, the function of its thrust reversers and inactivated landing gear. Muan locals have reported hearing explosions from the plane before it made its emergency landing.
Consequently, much of the public’s attention has focused on Jeju Air, the airline company.
The low-cost carrier’s bosses bowed deeply and issued a public apology at a news conference hours after the plane crash on Sunday. Named after Jeju Island, the airline is the first and largest of South Korea’s budget airlines. Among various concerns is the excessive usage of the plane during the year-end peak season for holiday trips. The Jeju aeroplane that crashed on Sunday was found to have operated 13 flights in 48 hours prior to the incident, according to Yonhap News Agency, which cited industry sources.
Local media has also highlighted online posts in the past that were presumed to be written by former and current Jeju Air employees. Posting on the anonymous online site Blind, a post from last year claimed that the company’s efforts to “save maintenance costs” caused “four instances of engine failure while flying.” Another post that was presumably written by a company mechanic asserted that “fellow mechanics worked overnight on top of 13 to 14 hours of work, getting no time to rest except for lunch.”
About 68,000 Jeju Air reservations were cancelled in the span of 24 hours after Sunday’s crash.
Questions also circulated about the concrete embankment at the end of Muan airport’s runway where the plane eventually crashed. Housing a localiser, an instrument to guide incoming aircraft, the embankment and the end of the runway were at least 250 metres (820 feet) apart, in line with safety regulations, according to Muan airport authorities.
Back at the memorial altar in Muan, Song In-young, 61, says he is visiting from the neighbouring city of Naju to pay his respect to the victims.
“We don’t have any blood relations [among the victims], but I consider everyone who was on that flight as my family. Especially for people like me who went through times of brutal political oppression in the 1980s, we feel a deep bond to cities in this part of the region,” he says, mentioning the Gwangju massacre, in which hundreds of lives were known to be taken by the military, which was in power at the time.
“I believe in an afterlife, so I wish all the victims peace in their next journeys,” Song says. “More importantly, I hope all of the remaining family members can find peace as soon as possible.”