At least 179 people were killed when an airliner veered off the runway and erupted into a fireball as it slammed into a wall at South Korea’s Muan International Airport on Sunday, according to Yonhap news agency and other media reports. Two people were pulled alive from the crash.
The crash occurred as Jeju Air flight 7C2216, carrying 175 passengers and six crew on a flight from the Thai capital Bangkok, was landing shortly after 9 a.m. (0000 GMT) at the airport in the south of the country, South Korea’s transport ministry said. The aircraft veered off a runway and crashed into a wall at Muan International Airport in the southwest of the country, according to Yonhap. The Jeju Air plane, which was carrying 175 passengers and six flight attendants, was reportedly flying back from Bangkok in Thailand and the accident took place while it was landing. Two people were found alive and rescue operations were still under way, a fire official told the Reuters news agency.
Both local fire officials and aviation experts say some sort of landing gear malfunction was likely. Lee Jeong-hyun, the head of the Muan Fire Department, also briefed the media saying that the cause was “estimated to be the occurrence of a bird strike or bad weather.”
The plane’s pilot made a mayday call to the control tower about a minute after acceding to controllers’ request to change landing runways to avoid a possible bird strike risk, according to a briefing from the Land Ministry. The plane hit navigation equipment on the ground before crashing into a wall, according to media reports. The flight data recording black box has been recovered by the accident investigation committee but the voice recording device has not been recovered yet, officials said.
For Editorial Inquiries Contact:
Editor Matt Driskill at matt.driskill@asianaviation.com
For Advertising Inquiries Contact:
Head of Sales Kay Rolland at kay.rolland@asianaviation.com
Birds struck the plane mid-flight may have caused the malfunction with the landing gear. Muan’s runway is just over 3km long, so it’s not short. Details about why the jet landed without landing gear or flaps extended but the reverse thrusters have been deployed and why it was still at such a high speed at the end of the runway, remain to be seen. The engines may have been damaged upon impact with the runway. It looks like the plane hit the concrete barrier at almost full speed. There won’t be many survivors.
Jeju Air is the largest low-cost carrier in South Korea. Jeju Air Boeing 737 8AS (Call sign -JEJU AIR 2216; Registration: HL8088) narrowbody aircraft was manufactured in 2009 and powered by two CFM56 turbofan engines. It made its maiden flight on August 19, 2009 and was delivered new to Ryanair. Since 2017, the aircraft has been operated by Jeju Air.
On December 27, 2024, two days before the accident, the aircraft diverted to Incheon International Airport while operating Jeju Air flight 8135 to Beijing Daxing International Airport originating from Jeju International Airport. The aircraft was in cruising flight transiting the Yellow Sea at FL320 when flight crew declared an emergency. A descent and diversion to Searle Incheon International Airport (ICN) was then carried out. Flight crew squawked emergency transponder code 7700, declaring an emergency when established on the descent on track to the diversion airport.
At 8:54 am the Boeing 737-800NG operating the Jeju Air Flight 2216 was authorized to land at Muan International Airport in South Korea. As the plane was preparing to land, it was warned at 8:57 am about the potential for a bird strike. A minute later, it issued a mayday alert.At 9:00 a.m, the plane attempted an emergency landing, being forced to go around again after the landing gear was not deployed. A minute later, it received authorization to attempt a landing from the opposite direction. Most pilots are trained for situations like this.
The crash occurred as the aircraft attempted to perform a belly landing,touching down 1,200m along the runway, sliding down the runway on the engine nacelles with a sustained nose-high attitude. It continued 250m past the runway threshold before colliding with an embankment holding the ILS array and exploding.
If they were in a stabilised approach the landing gear would be down WAY before the bird strike zone. The Boeing 737-800NG did a go-around with no problems.
Then nothing like this has ever happened, a plane comes in without landing gear, speed close to take off and on at least at 50% power until it contacted an object on the ground – Pilots missed alternate landing gear extension, alternate flap extension, approach and landing speed judgement, diversion, not correctly configure the aircraft for landing, way too fast, way too far down the runway before touchdown, 15-degree nose-up. Either a complete loss of throttle control or the pilots tried to climb out and it was too late.
We have seen pilots ignore repeated alarms in the cockpit, warnings from the GPWS many times including PIA8303 and Air France 447. This is more than likely another example of a crew doing everything other than what they should have been doing.
There are 3 hydraulic systems aboard the 737 – system A, B and Stand by. The A system powers the landing gear for retraction, extension, and nose wheel steering. The B system powers the flaps and leading edge devices, with an electric backup that can extend and retract the flaps. All have redundancy but a complete failure of all 3 hydraulic systems and the backup electrical system to operate the flaps is damn near impossible.
APU can provide electrical power to the electric motor driven pumps (EMDP’s) and thus supply hydraulic pressure. One of the amazing things that Captain Sullenberger did, when they first hit the birds on takeoff was immediately start the APU, before he did anything else, as I guess he knew he might lose both engine power from the birds.
Hydraulics not required for emergency use of flaps and landing gear on 737. Pilots should be able to manually drop the landing gear no matter what. Landing gear can be manually extended with the 3 red handles-Right Main, Nose and Left Main-behind crew seats on the floor, physically connected to each strut that when pulled releases the gear which falls and locks into place by their own weight and wind drag. On Boeing 737-800 NG, the manual extension handles will function with the landing gear lever in any position.
However it does take time. Crew only gave themselves 7 minutes to execute check lists and final between loss of signal on initial approach and attempted go around.
There’s really no explanation for the gear being retracted other than the pilot forgot. The Control Tower should have informed them that their landing gear was not down though. The aircraft won’t even allow use of thrust reversers unless you have main gear strut compression, in this case with the gear still retracted there may not be any thrust reversers nor spoilers available.
The lack of ADS-B during the final landing implies a complete loss of power.
The aviation industry is built on redundancy and there are very few single-point failures in airplane design or airplane operations A combination of unlucky factors including ongoing mechanical issues, a bird strike, and poor crew resource management caused this crash. Also it appears the airport was expecting an emergency landing.
MWX runway 19 has a Landing Distance 2800m. The end of Runway 19 is about 6 m below its threshold. The embankment is to raise the localizer array, to compensate for the runway slope. However, within the United States and Canada these would be required to be mounted on frangible support structures. You want the support structure to break-away and cause as minimal damage as possible in a scenario like this. You would not be allowed to construct an earth mound like this within the runway overruns. This localizer is about 150m off the overrun, which would violate North American Airfield criteria, but it’s a Korean Airport so regulations are different.
My guessing
Birdstrike with severe damage on the right engine and crew incorrectly shuts down the left engine, losing both engines.
Immediate turn back to land tailwind opposite direction.
Split decisions, forgot the landing gear.
The plane wasn’t ready for that belly landing at all.