Seoul, South Korea — South Korean officials said Monday they will conduct safety inspections of all Boeing 737-800s operated by the country’s airlines, as they work to determine the cause of an incident. plane crash that killed 179 people the day before.
Sunday’s crash, the country’s worst air disaster in decades, sparked an outpouring of national sympathy.
Many people worry about how effectively the South Korean government will handle the disaster as it grapples with a leadership vacuum following recent back-to-back elections. impeachments of President Yoon Suk Yeol And Prime Minister and Acting President Han Duck-soothe country’s two highest officials, amid political tumult caused by Yoon’s mandate. brief imposition of martial law earlier this month.
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New Acting President Choi Sang-mok chaired a meeting of the accident task force on Monday and asked authorities to conduct an emergency review of the country’s aircraft operating systems.
“The essence of a responsible response would be to renovate aviation security systems as a whole to avoid the recurrence of similar incidents and build a safer Republic of South Korea,” said Choi, who is also vice-president. Prime Minister and Minister of Finance.
The Boeing 737-800 plane operated by South Korean budget airline Jeju Air aborted its first landing attempt for reasons that were not immediately clear. Then, on 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 its front landing gear deployed, overran the runway, struck a concrete fence and burst into a fireball.
Alan Price, former chief pilot at Delta Air Lines and now a consultant, said the Boeing 737-800 is a “proven aircraft” that is in a different class of aircraft than the Boeing 737-800. Boeing 737 Max airliner this 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 737-800s operated by the country’s airlines, as well as a broader review of standards safety at Jeju Air, which operates 39 of these planes. Joo Jong-wan, a senior ministry official, said representatives from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and Boeing are expected to arrive in South Korea on Monday to participate in the investigation.
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Ministry officials also said they would examine whether Muan Airport’s locator – a concrete fence housing an array of antennas designed to guide planes safely during landings – should have been made with materials lighter which would break more easily in the event of an impact.
Joo said the ministry had determined that similar concrete structures were at other domestic airports, including on Jeju Island and the southern cities of Yeosu and Pohang, as well as at airports in the United States, in Spain and South Africa.
Video of the accident indicated that the pilots did not extend the flaps or slats to slow the plane, suggesting a possible hydraulic failure, and did not manually extend the landing gear, which suggests they didn’t have time, said John Cox, a retiree. airline pilot and CEO of Safety Operating Systems in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Despite this, the airliner was under control and traveling in a straight line, and the damage and injuries likely would have been minimized without the barrier so close to the runway, Cox said.
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Other observers said the videos showed the plane suffered a suspected engine problem, but that the landing gear malfunction was likely a direct cause of the crash. They said there was unlikely to be a connection 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 takeoff when the pilot detected a landing gear problem. Song Kyung-hoon, a Jeju Air executive, said the problem was resolved through communication with a ground-based equipment center, but the pilot decided to return to Gimpo as a precaution.
Local media reported that 21 passengers chose not to board another flight to Jeju due to security and other reasons, Agence France-Presse reports.
Ministry officials said Monday that the crashed plane’s flight data and cockpit audio recorders had been transferred to a research center at Gimpo airport before analysis. Ministry officials had earlier said it would take months to complete the investigation into the accident.
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 shocked and shamed many South Koreans, with the government announcing a seven-day national mourning period until January 4. Some questioned whether the accident involved safety or regulatory issues, like the 2022 Halloween crush in Seoul that killed 160 people and the 2014 ferry sinking that killed 304 people.
The Transportation Ministry said authorities had identified 146 bodies and were collecting DNA and fingerprint samples from the remaining 33.
Park Han Shin, a representative of the bereaved families, said they were told the bodies were so badly damaged that authorities needed time before returning them to their families.
“I demand that the government mobilize more personnel to quickly return our brothers and family members as intact as possible,” he said, holding back tears.
The accident comes as important 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 revived traumatic memories of the military regime of the 1970s and 1980s.
The political uproar led the opposition-controlled National Assembly to impeach Yoon and Han. The security minister resigned and the police chief was arrested for his role in enforcing martial law.
The absence of senior officials responsible for disaster management raises concerns.
“We are deeply concerned about whether the Central Disaster and Security Countermeasures Headquarters is actually capable of handling the disaster,” the popular JoongAng Ilbo newspaper said in an editorial on Monday.