The families of the victims of the December devastating plane accident in South Korea filed a complaint against 15 people, including the Minister of Transport and the Airline Chief who, according to them, are responsible for the disaster which killed every 181 people except two on board.
Police and government representatives have already investigated the Jeju air accident, so the complaint is widely considered as a symbolic step calling for a faster and more in -depth investigation. Many bereaved families complain about what they consider to be a significant lack of progress in efforts to determine what has caused the disaster and which is responsible.
On Tuesday, 72 close to the bereaved submitted the complaint to the provincial police agency in Jeonnam in southern South Korea, according to their lawyers and the police.
The 15 people mentioned in the complaint include the Minister of Transport, the President of Jeju Air and the airlines responsible for maintenance and safety problems, as well as managers of MUAN international airport who are responsible for the prevention of bird strikes, air traffic control and facilities management, according to a statement from a group of lawyers.
“Four months after the disaster, we cannot prevent ourselves from feeling deep anger and despair of the fact that there has been little progress,” said Kim Dae-Hye, a member of the bereaved family, in the statement.
Lawyer Lee SO-AH said on Wednesday that the complaint officially obliges the police to inform families in mourning of their investigation, although the police have so far only voluntarily done it.
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The Boeing 737-800 operated by Jeju Air skid from the track at Muan airport on December 29, 2024 after its landing gear was not deployed, slamming in a concrete structure and radiant in flames.
The authorities have since said that they had found traces of a bird strike in the engines of the plane and that the two black boxes of the plane stopped recording about four minutes before the accident. Many analysts have declared that the concrete structure, which housed a set of antennas called locally which guides planes during landing, should have been built with lighter materials that could be more easily broken during the impact.
But no exact cause of the accident has been announced and no one has been legally persecuted for the accident, the deadliest aviation disaster in the country since 1997.
Officials of the provincial police agency in Jeonnam said they had investigated the accident. They suggested that a complex incident as Jeju’s air accident would require a long investigation, but refused to say when they expect to conclude their probe.
& Copy 2025 the Canadian press
