South Korea plane crash: Did the tail section save two lives in Jeju air incident?

Tragedy struck Muan International Airport in South Korea on Sunday as a Jeju Air flight crashed, leaving only two survivors out of 181 passengers and crew. Only two flight attendants survived the deadly crash.

Two recent fatal plane crashes, one in Kazakhstan and the other in South Korea, have renewed concerns about aviation safety. In both incidents, survivors were found in the rear section of the aircraft: many from the Azerbaijan Airlines plane and the two surviving crew members from the South Korean crash. This raises the question: are seats in the back of a plane inherently safer?

A 2015 study by Time magazine that examined over 35 years of accident data found that fewer fatalities happened toward the back seats. While the center seat had a death rate of 39% and the front seats had a death rate of 38%, the back seat had a death rate of 32%.

The two survivors, identified as 32-year-old Lee and 25-year-old Kwon, were pulled from the tail section of the charred aircraft. According to the hospital authorities, both the survivors have significant injuries and trauma, but their lives are not in danger, the hospital staff said, the Korean Times reported.

The plane involved in Sunday's crash was a Boeing aircraft. 1 Boeing has faced scrutiny in recent years, particularly regarding the Boeing 737 MAX, which was linked to fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019, resulting in 346 deaths. This year, several incidents have been involving Boeing aircraft, including a cabin door blowout on an Alaska Airlines flight.

Meanwhile, South Korea ramped up investigations on Tuesday into the cause of its deadliest domestic air accident as police scrambled to identify victims. At the same time, families of those killed in this week's crash of a Jeju Air jet pushed for more details.

On Monday, South Korea's Acting President Choi Sang-mok, ordered an emergency safety inspection of the country's entire airline operation.

-With agency inputs