South Korea mourns for the crash of a low-cost airline slammed into a hill: A search for a bird strike or a black hole
South Korea has been dealing with a political crisis at the highest levels. President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was impeached this month after a short-lived martial law decree shocked and angered the nation, wrote on social media on Sunday that he was devastated by the accident. South Korea’s acting president, Choi Sang-mok, said the country would observe a weeklong period of mourning.
In a brief statement, Jeju Air apologized for the crash. The crash on Sunday appeared to have been the first death for the airline, a low-cost South Korean carrier that flies to more than 40 countries in Asia.
The disaster was the worst involving a South Korean airline since 1997 when a Korean Air jet slammed into a hill in Guam, a U.S. territory in the western Pacific. The crash killed 229 people.
Photos from the South Korean news agency Yonhap showed a tail section of the plane separated and engulfed in orange flames with black smoke billowing up. According to the photos, the plane appeared to have hit a wall.
Lee Jeong-hyeon, an official in charge of search and rescue operations at the scene, said the plane had broken into so many pieces that only its tail was identifiable.
A huge number of people were deployed to help with the search. The officials posted lists in the airport of the names that had been confirmed and collected DNA from relatives as investigators worked to identify the bodies.
There were 175 passengers and six crew members on the flight. Hundreds of people — grandparents, parents and children — packed the Muan airport waiting anxiously for news about their loved ones.
The airport in Muan had warned the plane’s pilots about a potential bird strike as they were landing, said Ju Jong-wan, a director of aviation policy at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. The plane issued a mayday alert shortly afterward, then crash-landed, he added, saying later that the plane’s black boxes — which should help determine the cause of the crash — have been recovered.
Two crew members were rescued from the aircraft’s tail section, but by Sunday evening the other 179 people on board had all been confirmed dead. The officials were looking into why the plane’s landing gear malfunctioned, whether birds had struck the jet, or if bad weather was a factor.
A passenger plane crashed while landing at an airport in southwestern South Korea on Sunday, killing almost all of the 181 people on board in the worst aviation disaster involving a South Korean airline in almost three decades, officials said.
But Mr. Meshkati and other aviation experts cautioned against rushing to judgment about such incidents. Crashes are often caused by a variety of factors and can take a long time to uncover.
Mr. Meshkati said the landing gear of the 737-800 line has a history of dependability and is well designed, though poor upkeep could result in it not installing correctly. “Maintenance is really one of the most important causes of aviation accidents,” he said.
Flight tracking at the Muan International Airport: Aircraft safety history of the Boeing 737-800 jet and its connection to cross-regional flights
There are bird strikes in aviation. They result in cracked windshields. Some airports deploy falcons and take other measures to keep their skies clear of birds. The Korean Office of Civil Aviation states that the Muan International Airport uses measures such as playing audio distress calls, as well as shooting birds, to break up flocks.
The age of the global fleet of 737-800 planes ranges from about 5 years old to more than 27 years old. A well-maintained passenger jet can fly 20 to 30 years or even longer. According to the flight tracking website Flightradar24, the plane that crashed was 15 years old. The first airline to use the aircraft, which was leased to Air Jeju, was Ryanair in Europe.
“The plane in question is very safe and has a good safety record,” said Najmedin Meshkati, a professor of engineering at the University of Southern California who has studied the safety history of the Boeing 737 line.
Nearly 200 airlines use the 737-800, according to Cirium, including five in South Korea: Jeju Air, T’way Air, Jin air, Eastar Jet and Korean Air. The plane is popular in Asia, Europe and North America and Boeing has delivered 5000 to customers since 1998.