Did bird strike contribute to South Korea plane crash? What we know

Greater than 170 individuals have died after a plane crashed as it was landing in South Korea on Sunday morning.

Harrowing video footage exhibits the Jeju Air airplane coming off the runway earlier than colliding with a barrier and bursting into flames at Muan Worldwide Airport.

The airplane, which was getting back from Bangkok, in Thailand, was carrying 181 individuals – 179 of whom have died, whereas two crew members have been rescued from the wreckage.

Authorities are investigating the reason for the crash, which hearth officers have indicated could have occurred on account of a fowl strike and dangerous climate. Nonetheless specialists have warned the crash might have been attributable to plenty of components.

The flight, 7C2216, was a Boeing 737-800 operated by Jeju Air, Korea’s hottest funds airline.

The airplane arrived in Muan at about 09:00 native time (00:00 GMT).

A South Korean transport official mentioned that the airplane had been trying to land however was pressured to carry off after air site visitors management gave a fowl strike warning – an alert in regards to the danger of a collision with birds.

About two minutes later, the pilot referred to as in a Mayday and air site visitors command gave permission for the airplane to land from the wrong way, the official mentioned.

One video seems to point out the airplane touching down with out utilizing its wheels or another touchdown gear. It skidded down the runway and crashed right into a wall earlier than erupting into flames.

A witness informed the South Korean information company Yonhap that they heard a “loud bang” adopted by a “sequence of explosions”.

Movies from the scene present the airplane ablaze with smoke billowing into the sky. Hearth crews have since extinguished the hearth.

Lee Jeong-hyun, the chief of the Muan hearth division, informed a televised briefing that the tail part of the airplane was identifiable however “one can’t recognise the form of the remainder of the airplane”.

He mentioned that the fowl strike and dangerous climate could have brought on the crash – however that the precise trigger continues to be being investigated. The flight and voice recorders from the airplane have been recovered, although the Yonhap information company reported that the previous was broken.

An investigator informed the information company that the black packing containers might take as much as a month to decode.

One passenger on the flight messaged a relative, saying {that a} fowl “was caught within the wing” and that the airplane couldn’t land, native media reported.

Officers, nevertheless, haven’t confirmed whether or not the airplane did really collide with any birds.

The top of Jeju Air’s administration mentioned that the crash was not on account of “any upkeep points”, Yonhap reported.

The South Korean transport division mentioned that the top pilot on the flight had held the function since 2019 and had greater than 6,800 hours of flight expertise.

Geoffrey Thomas, an aviation knowledgeable and editor of Airline Information, informed the BBC that South Korea and its airways have been thought of “trade greatest observe” and that each the plane and the airline have an “wonderful security document”.

He added: “Quite a lot of issues about this tragedy do not make sense.”

A fowl strike is a collision between a airplane in flight and a fowl. They’re quite common – within the UK, there have been greater than 1,400 fowl strikes reported in 2022, solely about 100 of which affected the airplane, based on data from the Civil Aviation Authority.

The most effective identified fowl strike occurred in 2009, when an Airbus plane made an emergency landing on New York’s Hudson River after colliding with a flock of geese. All 155 passengers and crew survived.

Professor Doug Drury, who teaches aviation at CQUniversity Australia, wrote in an article for The Conversation this summer season that Boeing planes have turbofan engines, which may be severely broken in a fowl strike.

He mentioned that pilots are skilled to be particularly vigilant in the course of the early morning or at sundown, when birds are most lively.

However some aviation specialists are sceptical about whether or not a fowl strike might have brought on the crash at Muan Airport.

“Sometimes they [bird strike] do not trigger the lack of an airplane by themselves,” Mr Thomas informed Reuters.

Australian airline security knowledgeable Geoffrey Dell additionally informed the information company: “I’ve by no means seen a fowl strike stop the touchdown gear from being prolonged.”

The airplane was carrying 175 passengers and 6 crew. Two of the passengers have been Thai and the remainder are believed to have been South Korean, authorities have mentioned. Many are thought to have been getting back from a Christmas vacation in Thailand.

The official dying toll stands at 179 – making it the deadliest airplane crash in South Korean historical past.

All of the passengers and 4 members of crew died.

Officers have been amassing saliva samples from members of the family gathered at Muan Airport to assist determine our bodies of victims. Different victims have been recognized by their fingerprints.

Authorities have to this point recognized 141 our bodies.

5 of the individuals who died have been kids underneath the age of 10. The youngest passenger was a three-year-old boy and the oldest was 78, authorities mentioned, citing the passenger manifest.

“I can not imagine your complete household has simply disappeared,” Maeng Gi-Su, 78, whose nephew and grand-nephews have been on the flight, informed the BBC. “My coronary heart aches a lot.”

South Korea’s Nationwide Hearth Company mentioned two members of flight crew – a person and a lady – survived the crash. They have been discovered within the tail aspect of the plane after the crash and brought to hospital, it mentioned.

The person has woken up and is “totally in a position to talk,” based on Yonhap, which cites the director of the Seoul hospital the place he’s being handled.

Greater than 1,500 emergency personnel have been deployed as a part of restoration efforts, together with 490 hearth workers and 455 law enforcement officials. They’ve been looking the world across the runway for components of the airplane and those that have been onboard.

Performing President Choi Sang-mok has has ordered an emergency security inspection of the nation’s complete airline operations.

Muan has additionally been declared a particular catastrophe zone, which makes central authorities funding out there to the native authorities and victims.

All flights to and from Muan Worldwide Airport have been cancelled.

A nationwide seven-day interval of mourning has been declared, and New Yr’s Day celebrations within the nation are more likely to be cancelled or scaled down.

Airliner Boeing has mentioned it’s in contact with Jeju Air and stands “able to help them”.

Jeju Air has apologised to households, with its chief government mentioned in a information convention that the airline had no historical past of accidents. It’s believed that Sunday’s crash has been the one deadly accident because the airline was launched in 2005.