Muan County, South Korea
CNN
—

The sounds of sobs, prayers and fear echoed through the departure hall of an airport in southwestern South Korea on Monday as the families of the victims killed when a passenger plane crashed over the weekend waited for their loved ones to be identified.

All but two people died on a Jeju Air plane carrying 175 passengers and six crew members after it crashed at the airport in Muan county shortly after 9 a.m. local time on Sunday, in the deadliest air disaster the country has seen in nearly 30 years .

Relatives at Muan International Airport wept as medics announced the names of the identified victims. According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, 146 victims have been identified so far, while efforts are underway to name the remaining 33 bodies.

In the towering atrium that normally serves as the airport’s departure hall, dozens of families huddled together, murmuring quiet prayers. Some were seen wrapping their arms around each other and crying while several monks spoke to gathered groups. There were rows of yellow tents for those staying overnight. Several relatives could be seen screaming at the officers and demanding more information.

Investigators are working to determine what may have caused the crash of Jeju Air Flight 7C 2216, which was flying from Bangkok to Muan. South Korean officials confirmed Monday that the pilot had reported a bird strike before making the doomed emergency landing.

“The pilot declared an emergency and a go-around due to a bird strike,” said Kang Jung-hyun, a senior transportation ministry official. The pilot said “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday” three times and used the terms “bird strike” and “go-around,” the official said.

A “go-around” is an aviation term that means that a landing is aborted as an aircraft approaches a final approach, and that the pilot instead increases speed and climbs before attempting another approach or redirecting elsewhere .

Neither the rear nor front landing gear could be seen in footage of Sunday’s crash broadcast by several South Korean news agencies. A video showed the plane, a Boeing 737-800, skidding on its belly at high speed, hitting an embankment and exploding in a fireball.

Experts told CNN that the plane’s landing gear – particularly the takeoff and landing wheels – did not appear to be fully extended. But what caused this deployment failure, which analysts said was extremely rare, is still unclear.

According to a statement from the Ministry of Transport, two black boxes – the flight data and the voice recorders – were recovered from the crash site. But the black box suffered external damage that required it to be sent to an analysis center in Seoul to see how much information could be extracted and whether it needed to be sent to the United States, the ministry said.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is leading a team of American investigators, including from Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration, to assist South Korean authorities. The NTSB said all information would be released by South Korea’s Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board.

South Korea’s transportation ministry said Monday that the control tower warned the pilot about birds in the area just before the pilot reported a bird strike and made the emergency call, asking him to land in the opposite direction.

The ministry made the clarification after saying on Sunday that the control tower had instructed the pilot to change course shortly after he made the mayday call.

According to the ministry, the landing attempt took place about two minutes after the emergency call.

There remains uncertainty about what exactly went wrong. Some aviation experts are wondering what impact a bird strike might have had on the Jeju Air plane crash.

The Department of Transportation said the flight’s chief pilot has held the role since 2019 and has approximately 6,800 hours of flight experience.

South Korea’s incumbent President Choi Sang-mok has declared seven days of national mourning and ordered an investigation into the country’s entire aviation system.

The Transportation Ministry will inspect all Boeing 737-800 aircraft in the country, according to Deputy Transportation Minister Joo Jong-wan.

A total of 101 aircraft of the model used by six airlines are subject to inspection, with authorities examining each jet’s maintenance records for key parts, including engines and landing gear, Joo said.

“We will transparently disclose the progress of the accident investigation even before the final results are released and keep the bereaved families informed,” Choi said at a disaster management meeting in Seoul on Monday.

A day earlier, Choi, also the country’s finance minister, had arrived at the scene of the accident and declared it a special disaster area while expressing his “deep condolences” to the victims’ families.

The tragedy comes just two days after he assumed the presidency after Parliament voted to impeach Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, who had been acting president since President Yoon Sul Yeol was impeached following his short-lived martial law decree earlier this month and was dismissed by the Power was suspended.

Choi heads the centralized disaster response team, a responsibility normally assumed by the prime minister.

According to the Ministry of Transport, more than 700 police, military and coast guard personnel have been mobilized for on-site operations.

Mourners have begun laying flowers and candles at a public memorial altar erected in Muan to honor the victims of the crash, according to a video from Reuters news agency.

The victims of Sunday’s accident include 84 men, 85 women and 10 people whose gender could not be determined, according to the South Jeolla Fire Department. According to the rescue team, both survivors were crew members, a man and a woman.

According to the South Korean Ministry of Transport, two Thai nationals were among the passengers. All other passengers were South Koreans.

The father of one of the Thai victims, Boonchuay Duangmanee, told the Associated Press he “never thought this would be the last time we would see each other forever.”

His daughter Jongluk worked in a factory in South Korea for several years, he told the AP. She had been in Thailand to visit her family before boarding the flight from Bangkok to Muan.

“I heard that the plane exploded in Korea this morning. But I didn’t expect my daughter to be on that flight at all,” he said.

Another man who lost his daughter told Reuters he had not heard from her before the crash.

“She was almost home, so she didn’t feel the need to call,” 71-year-old Jeon Je-Young said of his daughter Jeon Mi-Sook.

“She thought she was coming home. “I assume that in the last moments she tried to make contact, the damage had already been done and the plane had probably crashed,” he said.

This article has been updated.