A son has revealed the heart-wrenching final text from his mother moments before the deadly Jeju Air flight crashed, killing 179 people. Geun-woo Park, who lost both parents in the crash on December 29, 2024, bound for Muan International Airport, opened up about his devastating loss during a new BBC documentary.
His parents, Park Seung-ho and Oh In-kyung, had been returning from their golfing holiday on the flight from Bangkok, Thailand, and were due to meet him at home to have dinner together that evening. Geun-woo Park shared: “I was their only child, so they loved me dearly. On the 29th, I was going to clean the house so that it would be tidy when they came back, and then we’d have dinner together. That was the plan.”
Air traffic control had authorised flight 7C2216 to land at Muan International Airport in South Korea at about 08:54am (23:54 GMT), so when Geun-woo Park received a text, he thought it was from his mother confirming they had landed safely.
However, recalling the messages in the documentary, This World: Why Planes Crash, Aviation’s Deadly Year, he said his mother texted him to say the plane couldn’t land because a bird had got stuck in the engine.
Then, in a final heartwrenching text, she asked: “Should I leave a will?”
Geun-woo admitted he thought his mother was “talking nonsense” and he replied with an emoji. But his messages were never read.
At 08:59am, moments after a warning about bird activity in the area had been issued, the pilot reported the plane struck a bird, declaring “mayday mayday mayday” and “bird strike, bird strike, go-around.”
The pilot then aborted the original landing and requested permission to land from the opposite direction, which air traffic control authorised at 09:01am.
At 09:02am, the plane made contact with the ground, before it crashed into a barrier and burst into flames.
Geun-woo said he was notified about the crash by a friend via text. “Since that was the only flight scheduled to arrive at the airport at that time, I went there immediately,” he said.
“At first I believed that my family would come back, I wanted to believe that,” Geun-woo said. “But as soon as I entered the airport I could feel that the atmosphere was not good.”
More than 1,500 personnel were deployed to the recovery operation. The plane was carrying 181 people, and 179 of whom were killed. Two crew members were rescued from the wreckage.
The BBC documentary, which looks into shocking commercial plane crashes, is set to air on October 13 at 9pm.