Seoul, Dec 29 (IANS): US aviation giant Boeing said on Sunday it is currently "in contact" with Jeju Air Co. following the deadly crash of one of the airline's Boeing 737-800 aircraft in the southwestern county of Muan.

"We are in contact with Jeju Air regarding flight 2216 and stand ready to support them," the company said in a statement.

"We extend our deepest condolences to the families who lost loved ones, and our thoughts remain with the passengers and crew,” it added, reports Yonhap news agency.

A Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by Jeju Air crashed at Muan International Airport, 288 kilometers southwest of Seoul, earlier in the day, with all but two of the 181 people on board presumed dead.

At least 125 people have died and two were rescued after a Jeju Air passenger jet carrying 181 people erupted in flames as it went off the runway and hit a wall at an airport in South Korea's southwestern county of Muan on Sunday, authorities said, in the nation's one of the deadliest aviation disasters.

Operations were under way to retrieve the bodies of the victims. Videos aired by local TV stations show the plane attempting to land without its landing gear deployed. The plane skidded along the ground, crashing into a concrete wall before exploding and being engulfed in flames.

"After the plane collided with the wall, passengers were thrown out of the aircraft. The chances of survival are extremely low," a firefighting agency official said.

"The aircraft has almost completely been destroyed, and it is difficult to identify the deceased," the official said. "We are in the process of recovering the remains, which will take time."

Most of the passengers were Koreans, except for two Thai nationals.

A temporary morgue has been set up inside the Muan airport to lay the bodies of the victims.

Officials believe the landing gear failure, possibly due to a bird strike, may have caused the accident. They began an on-site investigation to determine the exact cause.