Seoul, South Korea – South Korean officials said Monday they will conduct safety inspections of all Boeing 737-800 planes operated by the country’s airlines as they struggle to determine the cause of a plane crash that killed 179 people a day earlier.
Sunday’s crash, the nation’s worst aviation disaster in decades, prompted an outpouring of national sympathy.
Many people worry about how well South Korea’s government will handle the disaster as it grapples with a leadership vacuum after the recent succession. impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol i Acting Prime Minister and President Han Duck-soothe country’s top two officials, amid the political turmoil caused by Yoon brief imposition of martial law earlier this month.
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New acting president Choi Sang-mok chaired a task force meeting on the crash on Monday and instructed authorities to conduct an emergency review of the country’s aircraft operating systems .
“The essence of a responsible response would be to revamp aviation security systems in general to prevent similar incidents from happening again and build a safer Republic of South Korea,” said Choi, who is also vice prime minister and Minister of Finance.
The Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by South Korean budget airline Jeju Air aborted its first landing attempt for reasons that were not immediately clear. Then, during his second landing attempt, he received a bird strike warning from the ground control center before his pilot issued a distress signal. The plane landed without the front landing gear deployed, overshot the runway, crashed into a concrete fence and exploded in a fireball.
Alan Price, a former Delta Air Lines chief pilot and now a consultant, said the Boeing 737-800 is a “proven aircraft” that belongs to a different class of aircraft than the Boeing 737 Max airliner which was linked to fatal accidents in 2018 and 2019.
But South Korea’s Transport Ministry said Monday it plans to conduct safety inspections of 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 these aircraft. Joo Jong-wan, a senior ministry official, said representatives from the US National Transportation Safety Board and Boeing were expected to arrive in South Korea on Monday to take part in the investigation.
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Ministry officials also said they will look into whether Muan Airport’s locator, a concrete fence that houses a set of antennas designed to guide planes safely during landings, should have been made with lighter materials that would break more easily on impact.
Joo said the ministry has determined that there are 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.
Video of the crash indicated that the pilots did not deploy flaps or slats to slow the plane, suggesting a possible hydraulic failure, and that they did not manually lower the landing gear, suggesting they did not have time , said John Cox, a retiree. airline pilot and general manager of safety operating systems in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Despite that, the plane was under control and traveling in a straight line, and damage and injuries likely would have been minimized if not for the barrier being so close to the runway, Cox said.
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Other observers said the videos showed the plane was suffering from suspected engine problems, but that malfunctioning landing gear was likely a direct reason for the crash. They said there would likely not be a link between the landing gear problem and the suspected engine problem.
Earlier on Monday, another Boeing 737-800 plane operated by Jeju Air returned to Seoul’s Gimpo International Airport shortly after takeoff when the pilot detected a problem with the landing gear. Song Kyung-hoon, a Jeju Air executive, said the problem was resolved by communicating with a ground equipment center, but the pilot decided to return to Gimpo as a precaution.
Local media reported that 21 passengers chose not to board an alternative flight to Jeju due to security concerns and other reasons, Agence France-Presse reports.
Ministry officials said on Monday that the crashed plane’s flight data and cockpit audio recorders were transferred to a research center at Gimpo Airport before analysis. Ministry officials previously said it would take months to complete the investigation into the crash.
The Muan crash is South Korea’s deadliest air disaster since 1997, when a Korean Airlines plane crashed in Guam, killing 228 people on board.
The accident left many South Koreans shocked and embarrassed, and the government announced a seven-day period of national mourning until January 4. Some questioned whether the accident involved safety or regulatory issues, such as a 2022 Halloween crush in Seoul that killed 160 people and a 2014 ferry sinking that killed 304.
The Transport Ministry said 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 damaged that officials need time before returning them to their families.
“I demand that the government mobilize more personnel to bring back our brothers and relatives as intact as possible as quickly as possible,” she said, choking back tears.
The crash was even more big news for South Koreans already reeling from a political crisis triggered by Yoon’s martial law decree, which brought hundreds of troops to the streets of Seoul and rekindled memories traumatic events of the past military government of the seventies and eighties.
The political uproar led to the opposition-controlled National Assembly impeaching Yoon and Han. The security minister resigned and the police chief was arrested for his roles in enforcing martial law.
The absence of senior officials responsible for disaster management has raised concerns.
“We are deeply concerned about whether the central headquarters for disaster and security countermeasures can really handle the disaster,” the mass-circulation daily JoongAng Ilbo said in an editorial on Monday.