The reasons for the accident of the South Korean airline Jeju Air recorded this Sunday, in which 179 of the 181 people on board died, the deadliest in the history of South Korea, are generating intense controversy. The relatives of the victims and a large part of the public demand clear answers, while some aviation experts question whether the collision of the airplane with a bird could cause, as the sole cause, an accident of such magnitude, as indicated by the authorities. in the first version of the events. International analysts consider that the Government should refrain from making conclusive statements until it has solid evidence. This incident is also the worst air tragedy to occur worldwide in 2024.
For now, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport has avoided indicating the exact cause of the accident, claiming that the investigation is still ongoing. They have also reported that the priority is the recovery of the mortal remains of the victims, before beginning the analysis of the plane’s black boxes, which record the technical flight data and cockpit conversations. These devices are crucial to understanding accidents, since they offer essential data to reconstruct what happened.
The first investigations into the accident point to a malfunction of the landing gear, which caused an emergency descent, after which the plane slid down the runway with the fuselage in direct contact with the asphalt, at high speed and without being able to deploy the landing gear, as seen in the videos that have been released at the time.
Sources at Muan International Airport (South Jeolla province, in the southwest of the country) explained that flight 7C2216 from Bangkok, capital of Thailand, should have landed at 8:30 a.m. (00:30 a.m. Spanish peninsular time). The twin-engine aircraft, a Boeing 737-800, had to abort that first attempt to land due to problems with the landing gear, apparently caused by the impact with a bird, which the airport control tower warned about at 8:57, according to the Ministry of Transport.
Local South Korean media have reproduced a text message that one of the passengers sent to one of his loved ones, in which he claimed that a bird had collided with one of the wings of the plane, where the aircraft’s engines are located, and he wondered if he had to pronounce “his last words.” The pilot called for help at 8:58 and attempted to land at 9:00, but the aircraft crashed three minutes later while touching the runway without having deployed the landing gear.
“Bird strikes happen frequently, but I have never seen one that prevents the landing gear from extending,” Geoffrey Dell, an Australian aviation safety expert, told Reuters. A bird strike could, in theory, have affected the plane’s CFM International engines if they had sucked in a flock. However, Dell believes that even in that scenario, the engines would not have shut down immediately, giving the pilots enough time to respond and handle the situation.
Some witnesses on the ground also told South Korean media that they had seen flames in one of the engines and heard explosions before the aircraft made its failed emergency landing. These testimonies and the sequence of events suggest that, although it is a possibility that the plane collided with one or several birds, it is unlikely that this was the only cause, or even the main cause, of the accident. It is also unclear why the plane failed to stop after touching down.
In one of the videos, the device skids until it leaves the runway and crashes into some concrete structures that delimit the perimeter of the airport, causing it to explode and become engulfed in flames. Geoffrey Thomas, editor of AirlineNewshas questioned whether the emergency services were not prepared on the ground when the forced landing was going to take place. “In a landing on the fuselage, you usually touch down on the engines. You arrive with a minimum of fuel, the fire tanker vehicles are present, they cover the runway with foam and you land at the far end of it. Normally, it ends up being a controllable situation,” Reuters reports.
A relatively short track
Deputy Transport Minister Ju Jong-wan has dismissed speculation that the length of the (relatively short) runway contributed to the tragedy. “It is 2,800 meters long and has been used by type C aircraft [de 24 a 36 metros de envergadura]. So it is not the cause of the accident,” he declared. The crashed plane had an extension of 35.8 meters. “Both ends of the track have safety zones with buffer areas before reaching the outer wall. The airport design meets international security standards, although the wall may appear closer than it really is,” Ju added.
Transport has also reported that the flight data recorder was found approximately two and a half hours after the accident (at 11:30 local time), while the cockpit voice recorder was recovered at 2:24 p.m. The data that is recorded in them will offer the most revealing analysis of what happened. Experts warn that air incidents are often the result of a combination of factors and that it can take months to reconstruct the sequence of events that took place inside and outside the plane.
Jeju Air has refused to comment on the cause of the accident during press conferences held in recent hours, claiming that the investigations have not been concluded. In accordance with international aviation rules, South Korea will lead a civilian investigation of the accident, which will automatically involve the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), since The plane was designed and manufactured in that country. The crashed Boeing model is one of the most used in the world and has a good safety record. It was developed long before the Max variant, which has been at the center of the company’s recent crisis due to various malfunctions.
