Vietnamese State President Luong Cuong and Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh sent messages of condolence to Acting President of South Korea Choi Sang Mok on Sunday for the Jeju Air plane crash which resulted in 179 fatalities, the worst-ever aviation disaster on South Korean soil, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Authorities are citing a bird strike as the likely cause of the crash.

Chairman of the National Assembly Tran Thanh Man and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son also sent a message of sympathy to Speaker of the South Korean National Assembly Woo Won Shik and South Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs Cho Tae Yul, respectively.

AFP reported that on Sunday, a Boeing 737-800 aircraft operating under Jeju Air flew 181 people from Thailand to South Korea before crashing on arrival at Muan International Airport, 288 kilometers (about 180 miles) southwest of Seoul.

During a press conference on the same day, a South Korean official said the incident happened in a matter of minutes as Jeju Air Flight 2216 tried to land. The control tower issued a warning of a bird strike on the flight's first attempt at landing, to which air control confirmed the pilot responded with "mayday!"

Three minutes later, the aircraft was granted permission to land.

However, the plane descended on the runway on its belly, without the wheels or other landing gears activated. Skidding off the runway and crashing into a wall, smoke streamed out of the engines before exploding into flames.

Only two people were rescued, both flight attendants, and 179 people were confirmed dead.

This is the third-largest number of casualties in South Korea's aviation history.

In 1983, a Korean Air flight was shot down by the former Soviet Union, killing all 269 people on board.

In 1997, a Korean Air flight crashed into a hill near Guam's international airport, claiming the lives of 225 people.

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