All but two of the 181 people on board a South Korean passenger jet were killed Sunday morning in the deadliest global air crash in years.
Days after the Jeju Air plane crash, there is little explanation as to why the plane went down. As investigators try to piece together what happened, video from the scene and early official reports offer clues.
The pilot reported the bird strike at 8:59 a.m. and told air traffic controllers at Muan International Airport that he would abort the landing attempt and circle in the air to prepare for another one. Instead of going all the way around, he approached the runway facing south at high speed.
The aircraft missed the normal touchdown zone and landed much further up the runway than usual. He then hurtled down the runway on his belly, leaving a trail of smoke.
The pilot appeared unable to control the engines and no landing gear was visible as the plane contacted the runway – two critical elements in slowing the plane during landing. It also appears that the plane did not deploy the flaps, another means of speed control.
The plane eventually overran the runway and crashed into a concrete structure.
At the end of the video, the plane burst into flames.
The plane was a Boeing 737-800, one of the most common passenger planes in the world. It took off from Bangkok with six crew members and 175 passengers, most of whom were South Koreans returning home after a Christmas holiday in Thailand.
Officials found the plane’s “black box,” an electronic flight recorder containing cockpit voice and other flight data that helps plane crash investigations.
The device is partially damaged so it may take some time to recover the data, according to experts, but it could prove crucial in determining what happened in four fateful minutes between when the pilot reported the bird strike and when the plane crashed.
Sources: South Korean Ministry of Transport; satellite image by Maxar Technologies
Aviation analysts are looking at several factors that may have contributed to the crash, including concrete construction near the runway the airliner hit before exploding into a fireball.
Similar concrete structures exist at other airports in South Korea and abroad, said Ju Jong-wan, director of aviation policy at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. It was built to comply with regulations, but the government planned to investigate whether the rules needed to be revised after Jeju Air’s collapse, he said.
Photo by Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
A satellite image taken on Monday shows dozens of vehicles at the scene of the wreckage. Work from assembling hundreds of body parts it was painstaking, but authorities said by Tuesday morning 170 bodies had been identified and four had been released to their families.
Source: Planet Labs satellite image on December 30
The crash was the world’s deadliest since 2018, according to the United Nations, when Lion Air Flight 610 crashed off the coast of Indonesia, killing all 189 people on board.
