Dozens of relatives of those onboard the ill-fated Jeju Air flight JC-2216 gathered at a conference room at Muan International Airport, red-eyed and distraught.
One-by-one, the names of those deceased were read aloud.
At this stage, most of the victims had been identified. The sheer scale of the explosion and wreckage of the clashed passenger jet made body retrieval and identification a daunting task.
But the worst was being presumed, with all but two passengers feared dead.
"Is there absolutely no chance of survival?" one family member asked, according to Yonhap news agency.
The Muan Fire Chief Lee Jeong-hyeon lowered his head.
"I'm sorry, but that's what it looks like," he said.
Investigations continue into cause of crash
South Korea's acting President Choi Sang-mok declared a seven day national mourning period on Sunday.
The Jeju Air crash on Sunday afternoon is the deadliest aviation disaster on South Korean soil.
All but two of the 179 people killed have been recovered. There were only two survivors.
Some of the passengers were families with young children and teenagers, returning from holidays in Thailand.
Footage online shows the aircraft skidding along its bottom, before colliding with a barrier at the end of the runway and exploding.
The plane's fuselage was destroyed, with just the end of the tail left intact, requiring some 1,500 personnel to comb the site for bodies and clues for the crash.
While no official reason has been released, officials have confirmed a landing gear was malfunctioning and are investigating whether a bird strike or poor weather were factors in the crash.
One witness, Yoo Jae-young, told South Korean news agency Yonhap he saw a spark on the right wing before the crash.
Control tower operators have confirmed the aircraft was initially told to hold off from landing due to a bird strike warning.
About a minute later, the pilot issued a mayday distress call.
"At that time, the control tower issued permission to land in the opposite direction of the runway, and it was confirmed that the pilot accepted it and, during the landing process, crossed the runway and crashed into a wall," South Korea's Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport explained.
Aviation industry commentator Geoffrey Thomas told Reuters there were many questions that needed answering.
"If they were going to make an emergency landing with the undercarriage up, why didn't the fire tenders lay foam on the runway?" he said.
"Why weren't they in attendance when the plane touched down? And why did the aircraft touch down so far down the runway that it had no chance of stopping before exited the runway? And why was there a brick wall at the end of the runway?"
Mr Thomas said bird strikes and issues with an undercarriage were not not unusual.
"Yes, they do happen from time to time, but they don’t typically cause the loss of an airplane themselves," he said.
"Now, look, the cockpit situation is something we just don't know anything about."
It is Jeju Air's first fatal plane crash since becoming South Korea's first budget airliner two decades ago.
"We have serviced this aircraft in accordance with the maintenance programme, and there was no sign of anything unusual with this plane," Jeju CEO Kim E-bae told reporters.
"We will do our best to find out the cause of the accident."
The flight recorder from the black box has been retrieved.
Danger posed by bird strikes often small and manageable
While bird strikes can cause serious damage, including disabling engines, often the danger is small and manageable.
There have been only 292 human fatalities attributed to wildlife strikes from 1988 to 2019, according to the US Federal Aviation Administration.
Muan International Airport has recorded the highest rate of bird strikes in South Korea's regional airports, with 10 incidents since 2019.
Airports use countermeasures such as sound deterrents and monitoring systems, but responsibility fundamentally rests with the pilot.
The last time South Korea suffered a large-scale air disaster was in 1997, when a Korean Airline plane crashed in Guam, killing 228 people on board.
South Korea's transport department said the Jeju Air pilot had been in his role since 2019 and had 9,800 hours of flight experience.
