'Mayday, Mayday:' The Final Minutes of Doomed Flight

As investigators in South Korea try to piece together what led to the nation's worst aviation disaster in decades, the final minutes of Jeju Air flight 7C 2216 are coming into focus. What we know about the crash that killed 179 people on Sunday:

• 8:57am: The control tower at Muan International Airport radioed a warning to the incoming jet: "Caution: bird activity." As Reuters notes, the airport and runway are near well-known bird roosting and feeding areas. In fact, Muan has the highest rate of bird strikes among Korea's 14 regional airports, the Korea Times reports.
• 8:59am: A pilot radioed the tower: "Mayday, mayday, mayday, bird strike, bird strike, going around," per the Wall Street Journal. The jet made a low pass over the airport—this maneuver is typically done to let air-traffic controllers assess the landing gear's position—then did a 180 to approach from the opposite direction.

• 9am: Passengers knew something was amiss. "Should I leave my last words?" one texted a relative waiting at the airport, per CNN. (Translations of this vary in different outlets, but the gist is the same.) The passenger explained, "We can't land because a bird (or birds) caught in our wing."
• 9:01am: The tower gave the jet permission to come in for another landing, and it did so from the north this time.
• 9:02am: The plane made contact with the runway, but without its landing gear deployed, per the New York Times. The plane skidded on its belly down the runway at a high rate of speed. When pilots know they have to make a belly landing, they typically circle the airport first and dump fuel, and it's unclear why that didn't happen. "Did he lose both engines?" asked the chairman of the Korea Association for Aviation Security. "Was the decision to land in such a hurry a human error?" Whatever happened, the pilot did not appear able to slow the plane—or to lower the landing gear manually.
• 9:03am: The Boeing 737-800 hit a concrete barrier located about 800 feet beyond the end of the runway and burst into flames. Only two of 181 aboard survived the crash and fire: two flight attendants seated in the rear of the plane. The jet's black boxes have been recovered, but the Journal reports it could take months to get data from them because of the damage.

(More plane crash stories.)