South Korean officials said Monday they will conduct safety inspections on all Boeing 737-800 planes operated by the country’s airlines, as they struggle to determine the cause of the plane crash that killed 179 people the day before.
Sunday’s plane crash, the country’s worst aviation disaster in decades, sparked a wave of national sympathy. Many people are concerned about how effectively the South Korean government has dealt with the disaster as it struggles with a leadership vacuum following the recent successive dismissals of President Yoon Suk-yul and Prime Minister Han Dak-soo, the country’s two top officials, amid political turmoil caused by Yoon’s resignations. . He briefly imposed martial law earlier this month.
New acting President Choi Sang-mok on Monday chaired a meeting of the task force on the accident and instructed authorities to conduct an emergency review of the country’s aircraft operating systems.
“The core of a responsible response will be to revamp aviation safety systems in general to prevent the recurrence of similar accidents and build a safer South Korea,” said Choe, who also serves as deputy prime minister and finance minister.
A Boeing 737-800 operated by South Korean carrier Jeju Air canceled its first landing attempt for reasons that were not immediately clear. Then, during its second attempt to land, it received a bird strike warning from ground control before its pilot issued a distress signal. The plane landed without using the front landing gear, overshot the runway, hit a concrete fence, and turned into a fireball.
The Boeing 737-800 is a “proven aircraft” that belongs to a different aircraft class than the Boeing 737 MAX, which was linked to fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019, said Alan Price, a former chief pilot at Delta Air Lines and now a consultant.
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But South Korea’s Ministry of Transport said on Monday that it plans to conduct safety inspections on all 101 Boeing 737-800 planes operated by the country’s airlines, as well as a broader review of safety standards at Jeju Air, which operates 39 of those planes. Representatives from the US National Transportation Safety Board and Boeing are expected to arrive in South Korea on Monday to participate in the investigation, senior ministry official Jo Jung-wan said.
Department officials also said they would look into whether Muan Airport’s positioning device — a concrete fence housing an array of antennas designed to safely guide planes during landing — should have been made of lighter materials that could break more easily on impact.
The ministry has decided to have similar concrete structures at other domestic airports, including Jeju Island and the southern cities of Yeosu and Pohang, as well as airports in the United States, Spain and South Africa, Jo said.
John Cox, a retired airline pilot, said video of the crash indicates the pilots did not deploy flaps or slats to slow the plane, indicating a possible hydraulic failure, nor did they lower the landing gear manually, indicating they did not have time. CEO of Safety Operations in St. Petersburg, FL.
However, the plane was under control and traveling in a straight line, and the damage and injuries likely would have been minimized had the barrier not been so close to the runway, Cox said.
Other observers said the videos showed the plane suffering from a possible engine problem, but a landing gear malfunction was likely a direct cause of the crash. They said it was unlikely there was a link between the landing gear problem and the suspected engine problem.
Earlier Monday, another Boeing 737-800 operated by Jeju Air returned to Seoul’s Gimpo International Airport shortly after take-off when the pilot discovered a problem with the landing gear. Song Kyung-hoon, CEO of Jeju Airlines, said the problem was resolved by contacting the ground equipment center, but the pilot decided to return to Gimpo as a precaution.
Officials are reviewing whether there were communication problems between air traffic controllers and the pilot, Go said. “Our current understanding is that at some point during the navigation process, communication became somewhat ineffective or was cut off, before landing and impact,” he said.
Ministry officials said on Monday that the plane’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders had been transferred to a research center at Gimpo Airport before being analysed. Ministry officials said earlier that it would take months to complete the investigation into the incident.
The Muan crash is South Korea’s worst aviation disaster since 1997, when a Korean Air plane crashed in Guam, killing all 228 people on board.
The incident left many South Koreans in a state of shock and shame, with the government declaring a seven-day national mourning period until January 4. Some questioned whether the incident was related to safety or regulatory issues, such as a 2022 Halloween stampede in Seoul that killed 160 people and a 2014 ferry sinking that killed 304 people.
The Ministry of Transport said that authorities have identified 146 bodies and are collecting DNA samples and fingerprints from the other 33.
Park Han-shin, a representative of the bereaved families, said they were told the bodies were so badly damaged that officials needed time before returning them to their families.
“I call on the government to mobilize more individuals to return our brothers and family members as safe as possible and more quickly,” he said, choking back tears.
The incident was even more important news for South Koreans already reeling from a political crisis stemming from Yoon’s martial law decree, which brought hundreds of troops to the streets of Seoul and revived painful memories of previous military rule in the 1970s and 1980s.
Political turmoil led the opposition-controlled National Assembly to impeach Yun and Han. The Minister of Safety resigned and the Police Chief was arrested for their role in implementing martial law.
The absence of senior disaster management officials has raised concerns.
“We are very concerned about whether the Central Headquarters for Disaster Countermeasures and Safety is actually capable of dealing with the disaster,” the mass-circulation JoongAng Ilbo newspaper said in an editorial on Monday.
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