A three-year-old boy returning home from a holiday with his parents is believed to be the youngest of 179 to die in one of South Korea’s worst plane crashes. Five of those who perished were children under the age of 10 when a Jeju Air jet skidded off the runway and slammed into a concrete wall in a fiery explosion.
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Authorities said the oldest was 78, citing the passenger manifest. Just two survivors – a man and woman cabin crew – had been pulled from the burning wreckage after Flight 2216’s landing gear apparently failed to deploy. On social media, an image appears of the young boy taken just days earlier as he flew to Thailand for his first foreign holiday.
![[Plane Crash Kills Many In South Korea]](https://static.standard.co.uk/2024/12/29/7/00/Plane-Crash-Kills-Many-In-South-Korea-twy9e7h7.jpeg?quality=75&auto=webp&width=960)
His father Kang Ko, 43, and his mother Jin Lee Seon, 37, shared pictures of their trip on Instagram hours before boarding the doomed flight home to South Korea, local media reports. One of their snaps shows their little boy excitedly looking out of the plane window as they flew into Bangkok, while another heartbreaking post showed the toddler with his passport.
“My son is going abroad for the first time on a night flight, and his first passport has no stamp!” Mr Ko captioned the tragic post. Tributes and messages of condolence for the family have since been added to the post. An investigation into the cause is under way with experts and officials pointing to a number of possible factors.
