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By Bart Meijer
(Reuters) – Doubts remain in South Korea’s deadliest disaster on land, experts said on Sunday, questioning initial claims that a bird strike brought down the Jeju airliner.
The missing landing gear, the Muang International Airport where the twin-engine Boeing (NYSE: ) 737-800 belly-landed, and reports of a possible bird strike have raised questions that remain unanswered.
The single-aisle plane was seen on video broadcast on local media before it burst into flames and crashed into a wall of debris.
“Why didn’t fire tenders put foam on the airport? Why weren’t they there when the plane touched down? The runway?” said airline news editor Geoffrey Thomas.
South Korean officials said they are investigating the cause of the Jeju Air Flight 7C2216 crash, including a bird strike. 179 of the 181 people on board died in the crash.
A Jeju Air spokesperson was not immediately available for comment. Jeju Air declined to comment on the cause of the crash at a news conference, saying an investigation was underway.
Under international aviation law, South Korea will lead a civil investigation into the crash and directly involve the National Transportation Safety Board in the US, where the plane was designed and built.
The flight data recorder was recovered at 11:30 a.m. (0230 GMT), about two and a half hours after the crash, and the cockpit voice recorder was recovered at 2:24 p.m., South Korea’s transport ministry said.
“This gives you all the parameters of the plane’s systems. The heart rate of the plane is on the flight data recorder,” said Thomas. “The recording provides perhaps the most compelling analysis of what happened in this tragic accident.”
Experts warn that air accidents are often caused by a cocktail of factors and that it takes months to piece together the sequence of events inside and outside the plane.
A chain of events
Within minutes, the control tower issued a bird strike warning, and the pilots attempted to land after announcing May 2, officials said, although it was unclear whether the plane struck any birds.
Experts said it was unlikely that a bird strike could have caused the landing gear to fail.
“Bird strikes are not unusual, problems with the undercarriage are not unusual. Bird strikes happen often, but typically they don’t result in the loss of an aircraft,” Thomas said.
“I’ve never seen a bird strike that prevented the landing gear from being extended,” said Geoffrey Dale, a safety expert at Australian Airlines (NYSE: ).
Australian aviation consultant Trevor Jensen said fire and emergency services would normally be prepared for a belly-landing “so this seems unplanned”.
A flock of bird strikes could have affected CFM International’s engines, but that would not have shut them down immediately, giving pilots some time to deal with the situation, Dell said.
It was unclear why the plane did not slow down after hitting the runway, Dale and Jensen said.
Normally on a belly-landing, “you get on your engines and do a rough ride,” Thomas said.
“You go in with the lowest fuel, have fire tenders, cover the runway with foam, land on the far side of the runway and you’re usually in good shape.”
After the control tower warned of the bird strike and the pilots declared May 7, the pilots tried to land on the opposite side of the runway, a Transport Ministry official said.
“During the landing process, it hit the navigational safety facility called Environmental Protection and collided with the wall,” the official said.
Joo Jong-wan, vice minister of the Ministry of Transport, said the airport’s 2,800-meter length did not contribute, and the walls at the ends were built according to standards.
“Both ends of the runway have safety zones with green buffers before reaching the outer wall,” he told a separate briefing. “
The captain He has served in that capacity since 2019 and has logged 6,823 flight hours, the ministry said. The first officer has served in that rank since 2023 and has logged about 1,650 flight hours.
The Boeing 737-800 model involved in the crash is one of the world’s highest-flying airlines, has a generally strong safety record, and was built well before the MAX variant involved in Boeing’s recent safety woes.
