Tengrinews.kz – The crash of the Boeing 737-800 passenger plane of Jeju Air in South Korea was caused by a "fatal coincidence of circumstances." This is the opinion that interviewed experts shared with The New York Times (NYT), according to RBC.
The plane crash, which killed 179 people, occurred on the night of December 29 at the airport in the South Korean city of Muan. Due to the failure of the landing gear, the plane flying from Bangkok landed on its fuselage, skidded along the runway, and collided with a concrete structure, after which it exploded and caught fire. There were 181 people on board, and two crew members survived.
According to authorities, two minutes after being notified of the flocks of birds in the airspace, the pilot reported a bird strike and an emergency to the tower. The pilot said he would do "a go-around," meaning he would abort his first landing attempt and circle the air to prepare for a second. However, he apparently did not complete the full circle and was approaching the runway a minute later. Three minutes later, the explosion occurred after the plane collided with a concrete structure.
"A big question is why the pilot was in such a hurry to land," said Hwang Ho-won, chairman of the Korea Association for Aviation Security.
He noted that when landing on the fuselage due to landing gear failure, pilots usually do not rush to land, dumping fuel and giving the personnel on the ground the opportunity to prepare for an emergency. But in this case, the pilot apparently decided that he did not have this time.
"Did he lose both engines? ... Was the decision to land in such a hurry a human error?" the expert asks.
NYT writes that the flight was half an hour behind schedule, and the pilot had almost seven thousand hours of flying experience. Paek Seung-joo, a professor of public safety at the Open Cyber University of Korea, noted that an engine malfunction does not necessarily lead to landing gear failure, but in this case, most likely both occurred, forcing the pilot to land on the fuselage "in a matter of minutes."
Another factor that led to the tragedy was the length of the runway at Muan Airport. It is usually 9.2 thousand feet (2.8 kilometers), but due to construction work on the day of the disaster, 8.2 thousand feet (about 2.5 kilometers) were available. The authorities said that this distance was enough for a Boeing 737-800 to land, the newspaper notes, but the crashed plane landed further down the runway than usual.
Some experts also say that the tragedy could have been avoided if there had not been a concrete localizer antenna at the end of the runway, which helps the pilot maintain the correct approach path, and if it had been more firmly secured. The plane crashed into this structure, causing it to explode.
Ju Jong-wan, a director of aviation policy at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, said the antenna was installed according to regulations, with an earthen berm around it, but the government planned to consider a possible revision of the requirements.
At the same time, the NYT's interlocutors emphasized that the plane's problems began before the collision with the concrete structure. According to aviation experts, the pilot was unable to control the engines and landing gear during landing, which deprived him of two of the three key means of reducing the plane's speed: landing gear braking and engine reverse thrust. In addition, the plane apparently did not have its flaps activated - another means of reducing speed, they added.
Aviation expert Jay-Yoo Jung of South Korea's Chungwoon University said that if one engine failed due to a bird strike, the pilot would still be able to operate a hydraulic pump to lower the landing gear using the power of the other engine. Analysts say that even if both engines failed, the landing gear could be lowered manually, but given the rush to land, the pilot may not have had time to do so.
"Questions like these won't be answered until they examine the plane's flight data recorder,"Mr. Jung said.
The flight data recorder, or black box, has been recovered but is partially damaged, so it may take time to recover the data, Ju Jong-wan said.
British aviation safety expert David Learmount believes the crew and passengers were killed when the plane collided with a concrete structure beyond the runway.
122 dead as passenger plane crashes in South Korea airport
