At least 62 people were killed when a passenger jet crash-landed at an airport in southwestern South Korea, the local fire department told CNN.
Two people were rescued from the crash site.
Jeju Air flight 7C 2216 from Bangkok was carrying 175 passengers and six crew when disaster struck at the airport in Muan county, just after 9 a.m. local time Sunday (7 p.m. ET Saturday). The accident was caused by a landing gear malfunction, officials said.
More at the link.
Here is the Wikipedia page on Jeju Air. I draw your attention to the Accidents and incidents section (I’ll leave the footnote numbers in):
In March 2022, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport halted the two flights of the Jeju Air for 20 and 7 days respectively to the total of 27 days, because they failed to follow the safety protocol.[20][21]
You have to wonder what the purpose of putting a wall there is, when the only way an airplane would smack into the wall is when it has no choice to avoid such a wall.
There was an incident involving a Southwest Airlines 737 at Chicago’s Midway Airport in 2005, in which the plane landed during snow, skidded, and was unable to stop before going past the end of the runway, and then hitting, and breaking through, the concrete wall at the northwestern corner of the airport’s property. After breaking through the wall, the plane reached a city street outside of the airport, hitting three cars, and killing a boy who was in one of the cars.
The investigation indicated that the pilots landed the plane further down the runway than they should have, and were slow to deploy the thrust reversers.
Apparently, the nosegear on that plane collapsed during the incident, perhaps not entirely unlike today’s incident.
At any rate, Midway is an older airport, and has no choice but to have concrete walls surrounding the airport, due to the fact that it’s landlocked by city neighborhoods. Under normal operations, planes come nowhere near the walls. The photo below shows that the plane broke through a low retaining wall, before reaching the bigger wall.
Gotcha, thanks. Must have been an unpleasant final 10 seconds for the Jeju pilots, staring at that wall coming and being unable to do anything at that point about it.
Is it possible to have the thrust reversers operating when the landing gear is not deployed? And, if so, is that wise given the debris that, I imagine, will be created from the skidding airplane?
I like Monty’s questions as they are provoking. I guess it’s true that debris would damage the engines but when pilots are trying to avoid collision, any measures could be good.
As an aside, I had an aunt who was flying today to Muan. When I read this story, I called my uncle who told me it was not her flight. Not that it makes the story any more shocking to me - yikes!
The BBC is now reporting that at least 120 are dead. The two known survivors were members of the flight crew, who were extracted from the plane’s tail.
They are also quoting a press conference from the fire service, which believe that a bird strike, and poor weather, may have played a role. The latter surprises me, as the film of the crash seems to show a mostly-clear sky, but I suppose that there might have been wind.
It seems like one of the biggest contributing factors to the crash was the pilot’s decision to keep the plane nose pointed up during the skidding on the runway, rather than pushing it down. Pushing the nose down would have increased friction of plane belly on runway and maybe hit the wall at a slower speed or even not hit it at all. But by keeping the nose pointed up, the plane’s speed remained high, and it hit the wall at devastating speed.
Do you really think the angle-of-attack makes much difference when a plane is sliding down a runway with the gear up? For one thing, I’m not sure how much control the pilot would really have in those circumstances. If the engine nacelles are on the runway, and those are ahead of the plane’s CG, then the tail is coming down no matter what the pilot does with the elevator. If the pilot really wants to press the plane down on the runway, he’s probably going to deploy the spoilers, just like he would in a normal landing.
The bird strike idea didn’t sound right to me at first, but it might make sense. If they took off, raised the gear, and then ingested birds into the engines, that would explain why they landed gear-up and still slid off the end of the runway.
The plane was landing at Muan, having originated in Bangkok. If they struck birds, it would seem that it happened during approach, as I haven’t seen any reports that there was any distress with the plane until it was landing.
Okay. Ingested birds into the engines on approach, kept their landing gear up to increase the glide range to reach the airport, landed long and fast and slid off the end of the runway, maybe?
Wow - now I have to scan a QR code to set up an account. Well, I literally have NOTHING that can scan a QR code so I guess Reddit will never have me as a member now.
Anyhow - saw the video clip via another source. Despite numerous media reports that the “front gear” did not deploy that actually looked like a full gear-up landing to me.
CNN reporting 151 dead with some people still unaccounted for so… not looking good. No word on the condition of the two survivors.
Er… what bad weather???
I checked the weather at the airport for the last 24 hours. Winds were around 5-6 mph gusting to 16-21 at times. That would be windy for the small, 2 and 4 sear airplanes I used to fly but it is NOT a problem for a B737. Or it shouldn’t be. Then again, Asiana Flight 214 managed to crash at San Francisco airport despite perfect flying weather and a working airplane. I’m wondering - and being generous here - if there was a translation error where authorities said something to the effect that they would look into the weather. It wasn’t perfect at Muan today, but it shouldn’t be a factor for a B737.
It’s possible to land an airplane, even a very large airplane, on its belly/without deployed gear successfully i.e. no fiery crash and everyone walks away. But add in a wall to crash into and things can quickly go bad. On the the other hand airport perimeter fencing is quite common.
I think “birdstrike” is a bit of a reach at this point but lets see what the accident investigation says. It’s another “possible”.
