There’s plenty of water around, but it looks like a lot of it is tidal flats with rather narrow channels. I’d expect a landing on an exposed mudflat or a couple feet of water to be pretty catastrophic. Better to aim for water at least a few feet deep.
A correction to something I implied earlier. This was not a MAX; rather a 737-800 of the “New Generation” or NG flavor. “New” referring to the early 1990s. The 737 has had, and continues to have, a very long run.
In this clip from CNN at about the 2:05 mark, we see something white and fairly large falling from the area of the engine. Seems very large to be birds, unless maybe we’re seeing them literally having their feathers blown off at that instant.
I’m pretty sure that’s just for nsfw (adult) content. If you replace the ‘www’ with ‘old’ you can access the content without an account or QR code.
Or debris and exhaust generated by the damage from birds being drawn into the engine. Catastrophic engine damage.
Looks like a big puff of smoke. And man, that guy talks like a scenery-chewing, hammy actor.
Juan Browne (blancolirio channel) offers useful information. He says the distance from the end of the pavement to the localizer antenna berm is 461 ft, which the plane covered in 2 seconds.
That equates to ~135 kts - not a whole lot less than normal 737 touchdown speed. So despite almost 10,000’ of pavement available, this plane wasn’t able to get rid of anything like enough energy to make the crash survivable. If the berm hadn’t been there things would have been little better: it was only about another 100 ft to the airport perimeter wall.
If you’re heading out into the neighborhood, even if it’s just semi flat agricultural ground at 135 kts, it’s going to be a big fireball at some point. Berms, walls, ravines, EMAS, frangible structure, etc all just change where the fireball happens; not whether it will or won’t.
Perhaps one or more of the pilots among us can glean some information from these charts I found online using the search “Muan International Airport landing chart”. The first one is html; all the others are PDF. The last one is for bird concentration at Muan International Airport.
https://aim.koca.go.kr/eaipPub/Package/2017-06-21-AIRAC/html/eAIP/KR-AD-2.RKJB-ko-KR.html
David Learmont, aviation expert, criticizes the wall design. .
Here’s a PilotBlog video which notes that:
With no flaps and no wheel-braking possible, #1 probably indicates that, without a go-around, even before landing a safe outcome was impossible. #2 certainly raises questions about proper maintenance.
Do we know how long they flew in circles trying to solve the problem? (I have no idea…I’d think they would do so until there was almost no fuel left).
Based on the news reporting so far, which indicates that the pilots sent a distress signal “shortly before the crash,” it may be that they did not realize that they had an issue until late in the game.
Yeah. Right now we have no idea what “the problem” was. All is guesswork at this point. All we know is what we saw in teh vids: a no-gear no-flap landing very soon after a distress call.
For those interested here are three pilots discussing the accident. (they show a couple angles but not the last moment our of respect):
FWIW the pilots in the video above said this runway was 9,000’ long which (I think) is about as long as any runway gets.
Current reports indicate no circles. At the time of the reported bird strike, they were flying north toward the airport. They passed by it to the west and landed south, touching down about 5 minutes later.
This haste, and the associated failure to deploy landing gear (which should be possible with backup hydraulics - and can be done manually) looks like either a critical problem calling for a “panic” landing, or pilot error.
Multiple online sources say 2800 m / 9186 ft.
Which length is well in the “plenty long enough for almost any problem a 737 can get into.” Especially since it’s located at sea level.
Of course runway length is only half the story. The runway behind the point you touch down has been squandered. Some wastage is expected. But too much wastage and what’s left proves woefully inadequate.
Even unto the last we see the typical situation where it isn’t one thing that produces dusaster; it’s several things. I’ve certainly not done an in-depth analysis but my gut is that with just gear or just flaps or just a touchdown at the start of the runway this might’ve worked out much closer to OK or even been a no-fatalities event. All 3 anomalies was 1 more than they could stand.
No, I addressed this earlier. 2.8 km is nowhere near the longest runway, but as @LSLGuy said, plenty long enough for a 737 under almost any circumstances. Wikipedia lists 125 airports with runways of 4 km or longer; about half a dozen have runways close to 5 km long. In many cases, like the airport at Denver International (its longest runway is 4,877 meters) it’s because of altitude.
But someone posted upthread that the Jeju plane didn’t touch down until far along the runway, which lends credence to the speculation that it wasn’t trying to land but trying to go around, and just didn’t have the power to do it, especially with no flaps.
Flaps don’t really reduce the power needed to go around (they probably increase it a bit, via the drag that they add). Their main job is to allow the plane to fly slower, which implies the ability to land shorter and to climb (and descend) more steeply.