Firefighters at the wreckage of a passenger plane at Muan International Airport after a Jeju Air flight carrying 181 people crashed, killing 179. Photo / Getty
South Korean investigators looking into a jet crash that killed 179 people are examining the placement of a concrete barrier near the end of a runway after an expert called it “verging on criminal”.
Jeju Air’s Boeing 737-800 belly-landed and skidded down the runway on Sunday before smashing into a structure placed beyond the tarmac and erupting in flames. Of the 181 people on board, 179 were killed.
Choi Sang-mok, South Korea’s acting President, ordered an emergency safety inspection of the country’s entire airline operation system as investigators worked to identify the victims and find out what had caused the deadliest air disaster in the country’s history.
Officials said Sunday’s crash came after the plane was struck by birds at around 9am local time (1pm NZ time), but experts have said a bird strike alone could not have caused the scale of the disaster.
Footage of the crash showed that the pilot had successfully performed a belly landing, but that the plane could not slow down before smashing through a localiser antenna built on top of a concrete-reinforced mound positioned at the end of the runway.
Officials are now investigating what role the localiser antenna played in the crash, transport ministry officials told a media briefing.
The antennas are typically built at the end of runways to help bring planes in to land, but in this case they were built on top of a concrete-reinforced mound.
David Learmount, a leading aviation safety expert, said all the passengers could have survived the crash had it not been for the foundations of the structure.
“The landing was absolutely perfect, the pilot put it down wings level, doing a good job in bad circumstances,” Learmount told the Telegraph, adding: “Even as it skids off the runway, the plane is still structurally sound and there is no fire.
“But then it hits the bank and all hell erupts. If it had not been there it would have sailed through it.”
Learmount said that while it was normal for an instrument landing system antenna to be placed at the end of a runway, the structure was usually designed to be “collapsible”.
“If the array had been designed as normal, the aircraft could have passed through it and continued to slow down as it passed through the perimeter fence, which was less substantial, and then come to a halt”, he said.
Joo Jong-wan, South Korea’s deputy minister for civil aviation, said the localisers had been built on “piled-up soil, and concrete structures have been installed within these soil layers”.
“The connection between these localisers and the accident will be thoroughly examined during the investigation process,” said Joo, adding that the “specific foundation on which these devices are placed varies” from airport to airport as there is no “standardised or uniform design”.
Learmount, a former RAF pilot and qualified flying instructor, described the presence of the solid embankment with which the plane collided as “verging on criminal”.
The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) sets out agreed international standards that the runway overrun should be cleared to ensure that damage to an aircraft is not severe, although it does not have the power to enforce these guidelines.
“I have never seen anything quite like this before,” he said. “There is no justification for the structure – everybody knows it is meant to be frangible. It is much easier to build something above ground than dig below. That is a possibility.”
Sally Gethin, another aviation expert, said the onus was on individual nations to adopt international standards on overrun areas set out by the ICAO.
“I personally haven’t come across anything like this before, but that is not to say there are no other examples of these barriers,” she told the Telegraph. “My understanding is that they [the localiser antennas] were quite close to the overrun area. It has given rise to the idea that the concrete structure was the main culprit.”
On speculation that the landing systems could have been installed on an embankment to offset the slope of the runway, Learmount said that if the antenna needed to be raised to work at a certain level this could have been done with a frangible frame.
Joo said maintenance records of systems such as engines and landing gear would be “thoroughly reviewed” for the 101 Boeing 737-800 planes operated by six airlines in the country.
Transportation ministry officials said the jet’s flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder had been recovered, but it was not yet clear whether the data was sufficiently intact to be analysed.
The Jeju Air pilot told air traffic control that the plane had suffered a bird strike before it crashed while landing, transport officials revealed on Monday.
While the control tower had warned the pilots that birds had been seen in the vicinity shortly before the strike occurred, and footage emerged online showing what appeared to be birds striking the engine, it is unclear whether this was the primary cause of the disaster.
Geoffrey Dell, an Australian airline safety expert, said: “I’ve never seen a bird strike prevent the landing gear from being extended.”
Trevor Jensen, an Australian aviation consultant, also said emergency services are typically prepared for a belly landing.
Choi Kee-young, a professor from Inha University, told South Korea’s Yonhap news agency: “If you look at the video, the landing gear didn’t extend, and the plane crashed with very little loss of speed.
“An airplane has multiple brakes, and if the landing gear doesn’t work, the reverse-propelled engines lift the wing flaps, which act as air brakes. But they didn’t seem to have worked in this case.”
Christian Beckert, a flight safety expert and Lufthansa pilot, said the video footage suggested that, apart from the reversers, most of the plane’s braking systems were not activated, creating a “big problem” and a fast landing.
Beckert said a bird strike was unlikely to have damaged the landing gear while it was still up, and that if it had happened when it was down it would have been hard to raise again.
“It’s really, really very rare and very unusual not to lower the gear, because there are independent systems where we can lower the gear with an alternate system,” he added.
Bird strikes have been a major concern for airports and aviation agencies for years. In the US, wildlife strikes cause more than US$900 million (NZ$1.595b) in damage to aircraft each year, and have resulted in more than 250 fatalities since 1988.
Data from the US Federal Aviation Administration and agriculture department show that bird strikes on planes are becoming more frequent.
From 1990 to 2023, there were 296,613 wildlife strikes globally, most of which were bird strikes. Last year, 19,603 strikes were recorded with 3.6% causing damage.
To reduce the risks, airports normally implement several strategies, such as adjusting flight schedules to avoid peak bird activity, managing nearby habitats to deter birds, and using non-lethal methods such as bird hazing or removal. Radar systems are also used to detect bird activity along flight paths, providing pilots with key information to avoid potential hazards.
On Monday morning, investigators were trying to identify some of the last remaining victims as anguished relatives waited inside the Muan airport terminal.
“I apologise deeply ... but the extent of the damage to the bodies is profound,” an official told families at a briefing Monday, trying to explain the immense hurdles facing workers trying to recover remains while also preserving crash-site evidence.
“There are many cases in which arms and legs have been severed,” he said, his words causing cries of shock and horror among the relatives.
Using fingerprints and DNA analysis, authorities have identified 146 of the victims, and are working hard on the 33 still to be verified.
The crash killed mostly local residents who were returning from holidays in Thailand, while two Thai nationals also died.
Park Han-shin, who lost his brother in the crash, said authorities told him that his brother had been identified, but he has not been able to see his body. “We want the authorities to bring our loved ones back, even if they are only 80% intact,” he said.
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