The crash of the airline—under bizarre circumstances—claimed 179 lives. It is among the worst aviation disasters in Korean history. One of the suspects in this tragedy: Birds!
Tell me what happened…
Just after 9 am on Sunday morning, Jeju airline flight 2216 crashed at Muan International Airport. The flight had returned from Thailand to Muan—which is about 290 km south of Seoul. The plane seemed to inexplicably lose control as it landed on the runway. It crashed into a concrete barrier and exploded. You can see the crash below:
The death toll: 179 are dead—but two members of the crew survived. Most were South Koreans returning from a holiday. The oldest person was 78, the youngest was three years old.
Where we are now: South Korea has declared seven days of national mourning. Acting President Choi Sang-mok has also ordered an extensive probe into the crash. We may get some initial answers soon—now that both black boxes have been recovered:
[F]or the cockpit voice recorder, “the initial extraction has already been completed,” said Deputy Minister for civil aviation Joo Jong-wan. “Based on this preliminary data, we plan to start converting it into audio format,” he said, “meaning investigators would be able to hear the pilots’ final communications.” The second black box, the flight data recorder, “was found with a missing connector,” Mr. Joo said.
What’s with the birds?
Right before landing—at 8:59 am—the pilot told the tower that the plane had been hit by a bird. So he planned to circle one more time—and try again:
But he apparently did not have enough time to go all the way around. Instead, just a minute later, the veteran pilot — with nearly 7,000 flight hours in his career — was approaching the runway from the opposite direction, from north to south.
In other words, something went wrong in barely a minute—between the reported bird strike and the landing. You can see the timeline in the satellite image below:
The baffling bit: The plane hit the runway without any landing gear. And the pilot seemed unable to control the engines—or the wing flaps which can cut speed.
So was it the birds?
The control tower had issued a warning about a flock of birds. And the pilot reported a bird strike—which isn’t uncommon in Muan:
Migrant birds travel along the western coast of the Korean Peninsula because its tidal flats provide them with ideal resting and feeding places. The Muan airport was surrounded by such places and was more prone to bird strike than other airports in South Korea.
But most experts say a bird alone can’t explain the enormity of this disaster.
The biggest mystery: is why the pilot decided to land with such haste—when the landing gear wasn’t functioning:
When pilots plan to do a belly landing, they usually try to buy time, dumping extra fuel from the air and allowing time for the ground staff to prepare for the emergency, Mr. Hwang said. But the Jeju Air pilot apparently decided that he didn’t have such time, he said. “Did he lose both engines?” Mr. Hwang said. “Was the decision to land in such a hurry a human error?”
Also a big Q: Why wasn’t the landing gear working?
[Flight safety expert Christian] Beckert said a bird strike was unlikely to have damaged the landing gear while it was still up, and that if it had happened when it was down, it would have been hard to raise again. "It's really, really very rare and very unusual not to lower the gear, because there are independent systems where we can lower the gear with an alternate system," he said.
What about the runway? While it isn’t the primary cause, it probably didn’t help that only 8,200 feet of the 9,200-foot-long runway was usable because of construction work.
So it could be just bad luck?
Sure. But there is a broader question here about airport design. In the end, the plane exploded because it crashed into a concrete barrier at the end of the runway. It housed a localiser antenna that helps the pilot “maintain the correct approach path.” These structures are routine at airports around the world—but the exact location of this one may have been a hazard:
David Learmount, a UK-based aviation safety expert, argued it was unusual and unsafe to have the localiser held by such a sturdy wall so close to the airstrip. “That kind of structure should not be there,” he told Sky News. “Not only is there no justification, I think it’s verging on criminal to have it there.”
But, but, but: South Korean officials point out that the Muan runway design meets global standards—and is also common at European airports. Other experts argue—equally strentuously—that these structures haven’t been a problem elsewhere:
Look at Sydney Airport: they’ve got localisers and they’ve got all sorts of stuff at either end of the runway, and in some cases … the runway is going into the ocean. If an aircraft touches down where it’s supposed to touch down, then there isn’t an issue.
One possible fix: is to make these barriers of a lighter material—that is likely to crumple on impact.
There isn’t any Boeing angle?
Boeing truly has no luck. Its 737 MAX planes were involved in two horrific crashes in 2018 and 2019—and investigations have revealed serious safety issues in design (See: this Big Story). But the Jeju jet was a 737-800—”one of the most common passenger planes in the world.” There are 4,400 in operation right now.
Then there’s Jeju: It is one of Korea’s biggest budget airlines—and the most “aggressive”:
Its planes put in more hours than its competitors’, officials said. Within the 48 hours of its crash in Muan, the Jeju Air plane had made a dozen trips within South Korea or to China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Japan.
What’s interesting: The Jeju CEO let the airport off the hook at his press conference— “saying the crash was a Jeju Air disaster and not the airport’s disaster.” The airline will most certainly be a point of focus for the investigation, as well. Also something to think about when we next book a budget airline flight.
The bottomline: This has been the worst year for aviation disasters since 2018—318 people lost their lives in 11 civilian airplane accidents. And two of them occurred in the last week of 2024—Jeju in South Korea and Azerbaijan Airlines in Kazakhstan, which killed 38. But, but, but: It may also be an outlier—since 2023 was the safest year in airline history:
[T]here was one accident for every 1.26 million flights in 2023, the lowest rate in over a decade. In other words, a person would have to travel by air every day for 103,239 years to experience a single fatal accident.
Amid the noise of blaring headlines, it’s easy to forget that airplanes are, in fact, the safest way to travel.
Reading List
New York Times (login required) and Al Jazeera offer the most detailed reporting—with multimedia—on the crash. The Guardian and Reuters break down expert analysis around the role of birds, and other possible causes behind the crash. TRT World has the data on why 2024 was one of the deadliest years in airplane accidents.
