The South Korean authorities did so he promised to discover what was the cause A Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 passenger jet burst into flames while attempting to land over the weekend. killing all but two of the 181 people on board. Days after the crash, there have been still many more questions than answers concerning the nation’s worst plane crash in a long time.
Authorities ordered an instantaneous inspection of all 737–800 planes operated by the domestic airline – several dozen planes in all – after the crash, but there was still no clear indication of whether a system failure, human error or a mix of things caused the crash.
Experts from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing were on the bottom to inspect the crash site, and the NTSB was expected to play a key role in deciphering data from the plane’s “black boxes,” which store information from the cockpit and plane systems.
Officials warn it’ll take months before clear answers emerge. Here’s a take a look at what’s known concerning the Jeju Air crash and a number of the key questions emerging within the tragedy’s wake.
What happened within the plane crash in South Korea?
Jeju Air flight 7C 2216 took off from Bangkok, Thailand, and approached its scheduled landing at Muan International Airport in southern South Korea on Sunday.
After the primary unsuccessful landing attempt, the Boeing 737-800 received a bird strike warning from the bottom control center. It then rose again before attempting to land a second time.
Two minutes later, the plane’s crew sent an SOS signal and attempted to land on a distinct runway. The plane landed three minutes later without lowering the front landing gear.
At high speed, it skidded along the runway, overshot the tip of the runway and struck a concrete fence, exploding in a ball of fireplace. The only survivors were two crew members rescued from the tail section.
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Observers said video footage of the crash suggested the plane had suspected engine problems, but landing gear failure was likely the fundamental reason for the crash.
Flight data and the plane’s cockpit audio recorders – the so-called “black boxes” – were quickly recovered and first transferred to a research center at Seoul’s Gimpo International Airport for evaluation. But on Wednesday, Vice Minister of Civil Aviation Joo Jong-wan said the flight data recorder was “deemed unrecoverable for domestic data extraction” and was due to this fact sent to the United States for evaluation in cooperation with the NTSB.
Joo previously said that “initial extraction has already been completed” for the cockpit voice recorder.
“Based on this preliminary data, we plan to begin converting it to an audio format,” he told reporters, meaning investigators will likely soon have the opportunity to hear the pilots’ communications in the course of the ill-fated flight.
“I think the cockpit voice recorder, if they can read it, will be the key to solving this mystery,” Robert Sumwalt, former chairman of the NTSB, told CBS News.
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According to South Korean news agency Yonhap and aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas, Jeju Air said the crash was not brought on by “any technical problems.” he told BBC News that Korean Airlines is widely believed to follow “industry best practices” and that each the plane and Jeju Air have “excellent safety records.”
A South Korean plane crashed right into a fence protecting its antennas
Transportation Ministry officials said Monday they might review whether the fence that the plane hit – a concrete structure that housed a set of antennas designed to guide the plane safely because it lands – must have been fabricated from lighter materials that might break more easily within the event of an impact. They said they were also trying to determine whether there have been any communication problems between air traffic controllers and the pilot.
The location of localizer antennas near the tip of the runway behind unforgiving fortifications will likely be of interest to researchers
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“Usually, at an airport with a runway at the end, there is no wall,” Christian Beckert, a flight safety expert and pilot for the German carrier Lufthansa, told the Reuters news agency. “You more [often] “maybe have a material retention system developed that allows the plane to go a little deeper into the ground” to slow it down.
Could a bird strike cause the Jeju Air crash?
Lee Jeong-hyun, chief of the local fire department in Muan, said on Sunday that a bird strike and bad weather can have contributed to the crash, but stressed that the cause was still under investigation.
According to CBS News’ affiliate network BBC News, a passenger on the flight sent a message to a relative before the crash saying the bird was “stuck in the wing” and couldn’t land, but officials haven’t yet confirmed whether a bird strike occurred.
Geoffrey Thomas, an authority cited by the BBC and editor of Airline News, told Reuters individually that he was skeptical that the bird strike itself could have caused the deadly crash.
“Bird strikes are usually not unusual. Chassis problems are usually not unusual. “Bird strikes are much more common, but they usually do not in themselves result in the loss of an aircraft,” he said.
Why wasn’t the landing gear prolonged?
It was unclear what engine or systems failures the flight crew can have experienced in the previous few minutes of the ill-fated flight. Experts say video footage of the crash shows no visible movement of the plane’s flaps during descent, which could have helped slow the plane, suggesting there can have been a lack of hydraulic pressure controlling mechanical devices.
The hydraulic control systems operate independently, and experts said the engine problem was unlikely to affect their operation.
The drone also has a manual control option, allowing pilots to lower the landing gear within the event of an electronic or mechanical failure. It was unclear whether the Jeju Air crew simply didn’t have time to manually lower the front wheels or if another factor can have prevented them from doing so.
Sumwalt, former NTSB chairman, told CBS News: “I flew 737s for 10 years as a captain and I can tell you that the landing gear can be extended manually, so the real question will be what was the sequence of events here” Did the bird strike set off the sequence of events that resulted in whose crew was in a rush and didn’t extend the landing gear? I doubt there was any failure of the landing gear, considering it could actually be fired manually and in the standard manner? “
A long and difficult year for the American aerospace giant Boeing
The disaster ended a troubling 2024 for US aerospace giant Boeing security problemsAND train drivers’ strike AND falling share prices.
Experts say the 737-800 is a more proven model than the company’s widely hated 737 Max jets, which were linked to fatal accidents in 2018 and 2019.
“I think it’s very important to separate this disaster … from the problems that Boeing has faced in the recent past,” Sumwalt said. “This plane is 15 years old, so it probably wasn’t a manufacturing problem since it’s so old and has flown thousands of hours. This is not a design problem. So I don’t think Boeing will take a direct hit because of this.”
Still, South Korean authorities said they might conduct safety inspections of all 737-800 planes operated by the domestic airline, including 39 Jeju Air planes.
