South Korean authorities are investigating airport infrastructure on the website of the nation’s worst civil air accident as questions develop over the function performed within the catastrophe by a concrete wall on the finish of the runway.
Transport officers mentioned at a briefing Tuesday they’d assess whether or not the concrete construction, which supported an array of antennas used to information a aircraft’s touchdown at Muan Worldwide Airport, violated any guidelines. Earlier, the identical officers mentioned the construction — often called a localizer — was positioned in accordance with worldwide requirements exterior the runway’s 199-meter security space.
The shift of focus to the localizer’s function got here as worldwide security consultants questioned if Sunday’s crash, which killed 179 individuals, was made worse by the positioning of the construction and the truth that it was constructed partly out of concrete. The excessive impression induced the aircraft to blow up, probably the reason for the fatalities of most individuals on the Jeju Air Co. aircraft.
The tragedy concerned a Boeing Co. 737-800 plane — a predecessor to the Max — operated by Jeju Air. The plane went up in flames early Sunday morning after sliding down the runway on its stomach and into the wall. The wing flaps and slats didn’t look like prolonged when the aircraft landed, which might have slowed it down, and the touchdown gear wasn’t deployed.
However one of many greatest questions, based on security consultants, is why the concrete-topped mound was positioned on the finish of the runway. Different nations, just like the US, Canada and European nations, use the identical varieties of antennas however they’re designed to interrupt simply to keep away from this type of situation, the consultants mentioned. It’s additionally uncommon for the tools to be situated on high of a mound.
“There’s no cause to place them on concrete,” mentioned Captain John Cox, the president and chief government officer of Security Working Methods LLC. “The severity of this incident would have been dramatically completely different had that concrete barrier not been there.” South Korea’s laws dictate any services or tools within the runway security zone needs to be manufactured from simply breakable supplies to attenuate the hazard to planes. However the guidelines don’t apply to the antenna construction at Muan airport because it was exterior the security space.
Jeff Guzzetti, a former accident investigation chief for the US Federal Aviation Administration, additionally questioned why such a inflexible construction was used to deal with the antenna array and mentioned the airport’s requirements would probably get an in depth look by investigators.
Guzzetti and Cox additionally suspected that each of the low-cost service aircraft’s engines might need failed previous to touchdown, provided that the wing flaps and touchdown gear weren’t prolonged, indicating the plane had misplaced all energy. It’s attainable each had been struck by birds and even that one was severely broken after which the flight crew mistakenly shut down the second, each mentioned.
Emergency Landings
There have been different incidents the place planes have landed on their bellies that haven’t resulted in fatalities or only a few, together with the “Miracle on the Hudson” in 2009 the place a US Airways flight landed within the Hudson River after the aircraft was struck by a flock of geese that knocked out each engines. Pilots of an plane operated by Piedmont Airways in 1989 had been in a position to land safely in Greensboro, North Carolina after the principle touchdown gear jammed. Neither incident resulted in any fatalities.
A Garuda Indonesia flight made a managed touchdown in a river in 2002 after each engines flamed out in the midst of a extreme thunderstorm, leading to one dying.
Authorities in South Korea are engaged on the 2 black containers, or flight recorders, from the plane which is able to shed extra gentle on the ultimate moments earlier than the aircraft crashed. The flight information recorder, which tracks plane parameters akin to altitude and airspeed, is lacking a crucial part, authorities revealed Tuesday, probably delaying the investigation.
Korean investigators are additionally getting help from a group from the US led by the Nationwide Transportation Security Board.
“It’s early,” Cox mentioned. “Let’s get the 2 recorder readouts. That can inform the story of the flight.”
{Photograph}: Investigators on the crash website of Jeju Air Co. Flight 2216 at Muan Worldwide Airport in Muan County, South Korea, on Dec. 30, 2024. Picture credit score: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg
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