Two Passengers in Jeju Air Crash Survived Because of Seat Location

The lone pair of survivors in the Jeju Air Flight 2216 crash in South Korea lived all because of their seating arrangements on the doomed flight.

According to TMZ , two flight attendants were sitting in the tail end of the commercial airliner while pilots tried to land at Muan International Airport on Sunday, Dec. 29. As the plane skidded across the tarmac, it crashed into a nearby wall, instantly exploding into a ball of fire.

Muan firefighters responded to the scene and took out the flames, but the only piece of the plane left intact was the tail section. The flight had taken off on Sunday from Bangkok, Thailand, carrying 181 people on board. 179 people died as a result of the crash.

Early reports claimed air traffic control warned the flight crew of a possible bird strike, and one of the pilots sent a distress signal that said, “Mayday, mayday, mayday, bird strike, bird strike, going around.”

A report from The Korea Times stated Lee Mo, the male survivor, remembered putting on his seatbelt for landing, then waking up in a hospital and asking what happened to him. The same goes for the woman who doesn’t remember anything besides hearing a loud bang and waking up in the hospital.

Reuters reported that the crash was the worst for any South Korean airline since 2002’s Air China crash that killed 129 and the 1997 Korean Air crash in Guam that claimed over 200 lives.

In 2015, data from the Federal Aviation Administration showed that the safest part of the plane during a crash are seats located in the tail section . Of those seats, passengers in the rear third of the aircraft have a 32 percent fatality rate compared to people situated in the middle third and front third, which have 39 percent and 38 percent fatality rates, respectively.