Passenger plane catches fire at South Korean airport; all 176 people on board evacuated

Firefighters work to extinguish a fire on an Air Busan airplane at Gimhae International Airport in Busan, South Korea, on January 28, 2025.
| Photo Credit: AP

The tail of a passenger plane with 176 people on board caught fire before takeoff at an airport in South Korea on Tuesday (January 28, 2025) night, news reports said. All passengers and crew were safely evacuated.

The Air Busan plane at Gimhae International Airport in the southeastern city of Busan was bound for Hong Kong, Yonhap news agency reported. The 169 passengers and seven crew members were evacuated using an inflatable slide, the report said, adding that three people were injured but their condition wasn’t serious.

Calls to fire authorities in Busan were unanswered.

In December, a Jeju Air passenger plane crashed at Muan International Airport in southern South Korea, killing all but two of the 181 people on board.

The Boeing 737-800 skidded off the airport’s runaway on December 29 after its landing gear failed to deploy, slamming into a concrete structure and bursting into flames. The flight was returning from Bangkok and all of the victims were South Koreans except for two Thai nationals..