# Jeju Air plane crashes in Muan, South Korea
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeju-air-plane-crashes-in-muan-south-korea/1012291
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [December 29, 2024, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeju-air-plane-crashes-in-muan-south-korea/1012291 "2024-12-29T03:41:20Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 7
### Author:  [@Pedro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pedro)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2025, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeju-air-plane-crashes-in-muan-south-korea/1012291/121 "2025-01-29T02:30:28Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> Had those guys aimed for the large amount of watery bay conveniently located alongside or beyond that airport they’d be alive and probably heroes. Instead they aimed for a teeny spot of pavement and _almost_ did it right and were killed for their efforts. Along with 180 other folks.
I think you are overestimating these probabilities. I seem to remember Sully was forced into it and everything lined up just right that day. There was skill but also a lot of luck. With a nice long runway alongside that icy river and time to prepare the landing (which he had) I firmly believe Sully would have chosen differently.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2025, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeju-air-plane-crashes-in-muan-south-korea/1012291/122 "2025-01-29T13:21:58Z")
Maybe, maybe not.
As these pilots demonstrated It is _very_ hard to correctly estimate how to fly a hasty half of a traffic pattern, and arrive at the opposite runway end at the correct speed, altitude, and configuration to within the very tight tolerances required to touch down on the runway and stop on the runway.
If good fortune has presented you with an easy off-airport landing opportunity like a river or bay where there is zero precision required in managing your descent, rather than the extreme precision required to make a runway, the smarter (which is really the more mentally prepared = pre-rehearsed) pilot chooses the easier more likely to be successful option.
Sully showed the way, and a lot of us in the biz had our eyes opened by that.
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### Author:  [@Nightaudit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nightaudit)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2025, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeju-air-plane-crashes-in-muan-south-korea/1012291/123 "2025-01-29T18:44:08Z")
Ground effect.
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### Author:  [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)
#### Post date: [July 22, 2025, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeju-air-plane-crashes-in-muan-south-korea/1012291/124 "2025-07-22T04:00:00Z")
_Update!_
[Pilots switched off wrong engine.](https://www.yahoo.com/news/pilots-switched-off-wrong-engine-082403902.html)
> [@](#):
>
> The pilots of the South Korean airliner that crashed and [killed 179 people](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/12/29/south-korea-jeju-air-flight-boeing-crash-muan-deaths-live/) switched off the wrong engine, a report has revealed.
>
> The Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board (ARAIB) found the right engine of the Jeju Air Boeing 737 stopped working after the plane collided with a flock of ducks, but that the left engine continued to produce power.
>
> However, instead of turning off the damaged engine, the pilots cut power to the side that was still operational, leaving the plane without any working engines.
>
> The investigators said: “A pilot may have mistakenly turned off the engine.”
>
> The cockpit voice recorder captured the pilot saying “shut down engine number two”, but the flight data shows that the pilots instead switched off engine number one, likely in error because of the pressure of the situation.
>
> An official told South Korea’s MBN television news: “The pilot should have turned off the right engine, which was severely damaged by the bird strike, but he turned off the left engine, which was spinning, and the black box and power went out.”
>
> The pilots on the Jeju Air flight had also activated the left engine’s fire extinguisher, which makes it impossible for the engine to be restarted while the aircraft is in flight, the report said.
&
> [@](#):
>
> The pilots of Flight 2216 had also ignored the correct procedure for how to land after a bird strike by climbing the aircraft back up and then turning it to make a rushed landing in the opposite direction on the same runway.
& (The **bolding** is mine.)
> [@](#):
>
> **Investigators maintain that there were no engine defects or mechanical failures, although power to the aircraft’s flight recorders was shut off for the last four minutes of the flight, so there could be key information that remains unknown.**
_There is more at the link._
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [July 22, 2025, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeju-air-plane-crashes-in-muan-south-korea/1012291/125 "2025-07-22T11:30:08Z")
They aren’t the first or last crew to make that mistake. Haste is a terrible thing.
A question we don’t know is how much the birdstruck engine was creating either smoke and fumes in the cockpit or was creating great vibration of the whole airplane. Both of those things make calm deliberate action more challenging.
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### Author:  [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)
#### Post date: [July 22, 2025, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeju-air-plane-crashes-in-muan-south-korea/1012291/126 "2025-07-22T18:02:19Z")
Wow. Another one of these! As LSL alluded to, there have been several over the decades (I can think of three previous ones). So sad.
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### Author:  [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)
#### Post date: [July 24, 2025, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeju-air-plane-crashes-in-muan-south-korea/1012291/127 "2025-07-24T13:35:35Z")
Common enough that, before the information about the fuel cut-off switches came to light, I heard it posited by a former military pilot turned commercial pilot and YouTuber that the recent Air India crash could have been caused by the same (failure of one engine on takeoff, followed by shutting down the wrong engine).
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [July 24, 2025, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeju-air-plane-crashes-in-muan-south-korea/1012291/128 "2025-07-24T14:14:48Z")
As a conceptual matter yes the Air India event could have been a case of good engine/bad engine confusion. Before we knew better.
As a more practical matter, there is no training that places such urgency on switching off a malfunctioning engine that anyone would think to do it at that time. If we have an engine failure or fire during takeoff past reject speed it’ll be a minute-ish before we shut down the engine. It is far more urgent and important to get away from the ground, get roll, yaw, and heading under control, get somewhat accelerated, then take stock of the situation, then decide what to do, then do it.
The lightning reflex to instantly flip switches is pure Hollywood heroism and maybe WW-II. It’s sure not current practice.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [July 24, 2025, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeju-air-plane-crashes-in-muan-south-korea/1012291/129 "2025-07-24T14:32:28Z")
Returning the the Jeu Air topic of this thread.
Ref @Monty’s cite to the news article , this is the **[Korean air safety agency page on this mishap](http://araib.molit.go.kr/USR/BORD0201/m_34591/DTL.jsp?id=eaib0501&idx=262906&mode=view)** and this is the **[Preliminary Report in English](http://araib.molit.go.kr/LCMS/DWN.jsp?fold=/eaib0401/&fileName=HL8088+Preliminary+Report_English.pdf)**.
Surprisingly, the report contains none of the info revealed in the news article. Not that the article is wrong necessarily, but the source for the info about engine shutdowns seems to be more in the nature of a leak or a press release than in the report proper. Which is unusual.
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### Author:  [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2025, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeju-air-plane-crashes-in-muan-south-korea/1012291/130 "2025-08-05T14:33:37Z")
> The blunders started with a design change years before the airport opened in 2007. The original plans drawn up in 1999, and obtained by The Times, envisaged breakable foundations to anchor the antennas, known as localizers, on both ends of the runway. But at some point the design changed, and the private companies hired to build the airport used concrete.
Perhaps someone can provide a gift link:
**Decades of Blunders Put a Lethal Wall at the End of a South Korean Runway**
The New York Times identified a series of missteps that made a Jeju Air flight’s catastrophic end much more deadly.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/05/world/asia/jeju-air-crash-south-korea-investigation.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/05/world/asia/jeju-air-crash-south-korea-investigation.html)
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### Author:  [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2025, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeju-air-plane-crashes-in-muan-south-korea/1012291/131 "2025-08-05T14:41:45Z")
Shutting down the wrong engine worsened the Kegworth air crash in England.
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### Author:  [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2025, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeju-air-plane-crashes-in-muan-south-korea/1012291/132 "2025-08-05T14:50:09Z")
> [@Monty](#):
>
> 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):
I’ve watched 100 episodes or more of Smithsonian’s, “Air Disasters”, and my impression is that each nation independently sets the safety standards for commercial flight, and that there is no international standard to which all nations must adhere. I’ve also read that U.S. commercial flying is among the safest in the world. I think I’m seeing a connection here.
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### Author:  [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2025, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeju-air-plane-crashes-in-muan-south-korea/1012291/133 "2025-08-05T21:43:15Z")
Yes each country can set its own standards. The International Civil Aviation Organisation has a set of recommended rules and procedures but there’s no requirement to follow any of it. The FAA and EASA are the big players when it comes to aircraft certification and the FAA rule set is used as a guide by some countries. Australia has been in the process of aligning the layout of its rules with the FAA but the actual rules themselves aren’t necessarily the same.
The goal is largely the same but everyone comes at it from a different angle.
Even when the rules are good there are cases where exemptions are available for when following a particular rule just isn’t practical. My home airport has minimal overrun at either end and it’s only about 1900m (6200ft) long. If you don’t stop by the runway end you either go into the sea or you plow through a highway, and then into the sea. A Jeju type accident here wouldn’t be good.
[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/200199460@N02/54702389656/)
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### Author:  [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2025, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeju-air-plane-crashes-in-muan-south-korea/1012291/134 "2025-08-05T22:13:45Z")
Who exactly decided that putting the runway on an isthmus so that it cuts off the two sides was a good idea?
[ ](https://imgur.com/aB96ykQ)
The southern end has a tunnel _under_ the stopway!
Ok, I guess there really isn’t a whole lot of flat land in the vicinity, but still…
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2025, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeju-air-plane-crashes-in-muan-south-korea/1012291/135 "2025-08-05T22:20:51Z")
The usual answer to that question it the land there was plenty spacious enough for the airplanes of the say when the airport was opened in 1940-something.
Then airplanes got bigger and faster, runways got longer, and development consumed all the other flat land sorta nearby.
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### Author:  [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2025, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeju-air-plane-crashes-in-muan-south-korea/1012291/136 "2025-08-05T22:32:58Z")
It does seem like the southern end is mostly landfill, implying that it was extended. Would be interesting to trace the history.
At least they ran the roads _around_ the runways as opposed to through, like Gibraltar.
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### Author:  [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2025, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeju-air-plane-crashes-in-muan-south-korea/1012291/137 "2025-12-22T04:13:45Z")
Update from _The Korea Times_: [Parliamentary probe into Jeju Air crash begins](https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/southkorea/society/20251222/parliamentary-probe-into-jeju-air-crash-begins)
> [@](#):
>
> The National Assembly on Monday launched a special parliamentary committee to investigate the exact cause of last year’s fatal Jeju Air plane crash that claimed 179 lives.
>
> On Dec. 29 last year, the Jeju Air jet from Bangkok erupted into flames after crashing into a concrete mound as it overshot the runway when it made an emergency belly landing at Muan International Airport, South Jeolla Province, following a bird strike.
>
> The 18-member committee, which will run for at least 40 days, plans to look closely into factors that may have been blamed for the crash, including the bird strike, the mound the jet crashed into and possible aircraft defects.
The article is short, so I don’t want to run afoul of copyright. Read the rest of the article (three paragraphs of one sentence each).
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2025, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeju-air-plane-crashes-in-muan-south-korea/1012291/138 "2025-12-22T12:38:55Z")
I wonder what Parliament expects to learn that their dedicated accident investigation agency did not.
For sure it can be useful for the legislature to take an interest in something the safety folks, or more often the regulator, fails to tackle for political or cost reasons. A recent example in this country is Congress getting pissed at the FAA & the Army over their non-response to that RJ-helo midair near DCA.
Be nice if one of the outcomes here is a thorough audit of Korea’s airline airports looking for hazards that should not be near runways. Such as large berms. And even better if, once the audit is done, somebody appropriates the money to go fix the hazards promptly.
Whether Jeju Air (or other Korean carriers) need a thorough proctological exam is a different issue I’m curious about, but not one where I’m ready to offer an opinion.
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### Author:  [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2025, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeju-air-plane-crashes-in-muan-south-korea/1012291/139 "2025-12-22T12:58:53Z")
> [@Monty](#):
>
> And in the “you really should have a human vet things before they get posted” news, [FlightAware, an airline tracking site, has the flight landing at 09:08 KST, with no gate indicated](https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/JJA2216), and an average taxi time of less than 10 minutes. Something tells me they’ll have to adjust the average there.
Just noticed this in the OP. To be fair to FlightAware, the plane really did land (as in, touched down on the runway) at about this time, and ADS-B transmissions would have so indicated. As for taxi time, it’s not unusual for FlightAware to use estimates when the source data isn’t available. For example, ADS-B transmissions aren’t available to any of their stations on most of the overseas portion of transatlantic flights, so the flight status information they display is what the plane **should** be doing and not what it actually **is** doing.
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> I wonder what Parliament expects to learn that their dedicated accident investigation agency did not.
As you suggest, they’re likely looking at “cause” from a regulatory standpoint rather than a technical one.
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### Author:  [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2025, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jeju-air-plane-crashes-in-muan-south-korea/1012291/140 "2025-12-22T13:10:57Z")
They are also looking for evidence of interference in the accident investigation.
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