S Korea orders all airports to install chambers to detect birds

All South Korean airports will need to install birds and radars for thermal images after 179 people died in December last December.

The deployment will happen in 2026

Investigators said last week that they had found evidence of a bird strike on the Boeing 737-800 aircraft – with feathers and blood stains found in both engines of the aircraft.

The investigation of the crash – the most deadly on the South Korean soil – is still ongoing, but will focus on the role of the bird’s impact, as well as on the concrete structure at the end of the track in which the aircraft crashes after making an emergency landing.

“Bird detection radars will be installed at all airports to improve the early opening of distant birds and to improve the reaction opportunities for aircraft,” says the Ministry of Earth in a statement on Thursday.

The bird detection radar detects the size of birds and their traffic paths and transmits this information to air traffic controllers.

The ministry added that all airports will also need to be equipped with at least one thermal image camera.

At present, only four airports in South Korea are equipped with thermal image chambers. It is unclear if any of them have radars to find birds on the spot.

Sites that attract birds, such as junk, must also be distant from airports.

Earlier last month, South Korea announced that seven airports would be adapted by their track safety areas after a review of all airports in the country that were carried out after the crash.

The cause of the crash is still unknown, but air safety experts said the number of victims may be much more unique if not for the structure in which the aircraft crashed after an emergency landing.

On December 29, the plane from the budget airline Jeju Air had departed from Bangkok and flew to Muan International Airport to the southwestern part of the country.

Around 08:57 local time, three minutes after the pilots contacted the airport, the control tower advised the crew to be cautious about the “bird activity”.

At 08:59, the pilot reported that the plane had hit a bird and announced a signal for May.

The pilot then asked for a landing permission from the opposite direction, during which he unfolded with his stomach without unfolding his landing. He overcomes the runway and broke out after being struck into the concrete structure, concluded a preliminary investigation report.

Flight data and voice recorders on the cockpit stopped recording four minutes before the disaster, later in an open investigation into black boxes.

179 passengers on board the Boeing B737-800 aircraft were between three and 78 years old, although most were in the 1940s, 50s and 1960s. Two cabin crew members were the only survivors.