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© Dmitrii Rud

South Korean low-cost carrier Jeju Air is to suspend nearly 2,000 flights and stop carrying cargo from 2 February until the end of March, after the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport ordered all nine of the country’s LCCs to improve safety standards.

The ruling followed Jeju Air’s flight 7C2216 from Bangkok, which landed on its belly and skidded at high speed, crashing into a concrete wall at the end of the runway at South Korea’s Muan International Airport on 29 December. The pilots had reported a bird strike and issued a mayday call.

Of the 181 people on board, only two flight attendants survived the crash.

Jeju Air announced that it would suspend 1,908 flights, comprising 838 domestic flights and 1,070 international flights, “to improve operational safety” during the rest of winter.

In June 2022, during the Covid-19 pandemic, Jeju Air became the first South Korean LCC to introduce a freighter, a B737-800BCF, and entered the air cargo business in earnest. The airline now has two freighters, flying from Incheon International  to Tokyo’s Narita and China’s Yantai six times a week.

According to Rotate’s live capacity database, outbound narrowbody freighter volumes out of Incheon to China and Japan grew 38% from 2023 to 2024.

On Thursday, ministry officials told the CEOs of South Korea’s nine low-cost carriers to improve safety standards by reducing flight hours and hiring more maintenance workers.

Following the meeting, the ministry commented that “no company can survive if it focuses on cost-cutting”.

The ministry will monitor the carriers’ flight hours, the size of their maintenance workforce and procedures, and tighten restrictions on buying new aircraft and operating new routes.

Carriers violating the new safety regulations will have their flight operation permits suspended.

Meanwhile, last week, the CEO of cargo-carrier Sirius Airlines was accused of failing to pay staff for 19 months, after the commencement of its operations was stalled for five years.

The CEO, whose name was withheld, is said to owe KRW1.9bn ($1.3m) in salaries to 80 current and former employees.

Established in 2020, Sirius’s operations were delayed due to the pandemic. It received an air operator’s licence last year and was supposed to have begun flights in June. However, Sirius failed to raise sufficient funds, delaying operations again.

Separately, Sirius’s CEO is the subject of a complaint filed by an airline staff member with the Ministry of Employment and Labor, alleging that he had harassed her.

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