South Korea’s leading low-cost carrier, heavy with debt and its stock already near record lows, is now facing intense public and government scrutiny.

Officials are inspecting the black boxes recovered from the wreckage of Jeju Air flight 7C2216 and have promised to release updates as soon as possible. The Boeing 737-800 is believed to have suffered a bird strike, but the exact circumstances surrounding its belly landing and subsequent destruction are unclear.

Belly-landings are risky and carried out only in an emergency. Here are the situations in which this is done, and what probably happened with the Jeju aircraft.

STORY: South Korea stepped up its investigation into its deadliest-ever air disaster on Wednesday.The transport ministry reported that investigators have extracted data from Jeju Air flight 7C2216's cockpit voice recorder and are converting it to an audio file.

The investigation into the Jeju Air plane crash will take several weeks, but some experts say the placement of a concrete barrier at Muan Airport may have played a key role in the deadly aviation disaster.

On Sunday, 179 people were killed when Jeju Air Flight 7C2216 crashed at Muan Airport after an apparent bird flight caused its front landing gear to malfunction

Maps and diagrams break down the final minutes of Jeju Air flight 2216 that ended in the deadliest air crash in South Korea.

Joo Jong-wan, the deputy transport minister for civil aviation, acknowledged that safety measures were not sufficient when building the embankment, but said they were done in line

South Korea plans to review the concrete walls positioned just beyond the end of some airport runways after an aircraft attempting an emergency landing smashed into one just over a week ago, killing almost everyone on board.

South Korea's transport minister Park Sang-woo said on Tuesday that he intends to step down from his position to take responsibility for the deadly crash of Jeju Air's Boeing jet on December 29, which killed 179 people on board.

After a Jeju Air plane crash-landed in southwestern South Korea in December 2024, killing all but two of the 181 people on board, a clip was shared in social media posts that falsely claimed it showed footage from inside the passenger cabin before the crash.