A Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 taking off from Osaka Kansai airport.
Fabrizio Gandolfo | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Accident investigators are attempting to determine what precipitated a Jeju Air flight to stomach land without its landing gear down at Muan International Airport in southwestern South Korea, killing all however two of the 181 individuals on board because it burst into flames within the nation’s worst air catastrophe in a long time.
South Korea’s appearing president, Choi Sang-mok, ordered an emergency inspection of the nation’s Boeing 737-800s, the kind of airplane used on the deadly Jeju Air Flight 7C2216.
The Boeing 737-800 is likely one of the world’s mostly used airplanes, and it has a powerful security document. It predates the Boeing 737 Max, the sort that was concerned in two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed all 346 individuals on board these flights. The 737 Max was grounded for almost two years, and a flight-control system, which was later tweaked, was implicated in both of those crashes.
The scene the place a Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 collection plane crashed and burst into flames is seen at Muan International Airport in Muan, some 288 kilometres southwest of Seoul on December 30, 2024.
Jung Yeon-je | Afp | Getty Images
There are almost 4,400 of the older Boeing 737-800s operated world wide, based on aviation-data agency Cirium. That means the mannequin makes up about 17% of the world’s in-service industrial passenger jet fleet.
The common age of the world’s 737-800 fleet is 13 years previous, based on Cirium, and the final of the collection of planes have been delivered about 5 years in the past.
Jeju Air took supply of the airplane which was concerned on this weekend’s crash in 2017. It was beforehand operated by European low cost provider Ryanair, based on Flightradar24. The airplane concerned within the crash was about 15 years previous.
Aerospace consultants say it is unlikely that investigators will discover a design downside with the long-flying plane.
“The thought that they will discover a design flaw at this level is borderline inconceivable,” mentioned Richard Aboulafia, managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory, an aerospace consulting agency.
A full investigation might take longer than a yr, and the weird incident has raised extra questions than solutions, akin to why the touchdown gear wasn’t deployed. Even with a hydraulic malfunction, Boeing 737-800 pilots can drop the touchdown gear manually.
One idea entails a doable hen strike that disabled at the least one if not each engines.
“If that occurs on the altitude they have been at, they might not have had time to do emergency checklists,” mentioned Jeff Guzzetti, a retired air security investigator with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration. He additionally mentioned if the airplane hadn’t run right into a mount of dust and onerous wall on the finish of the runway, the accident might have been extra survivable. That space housed a localizer that helps information plane.
The NTSB is main the U.S. crew of investigators that additionally contains Boeing and the FAA, for the reason that plane was manufactured and licensed within the United States.
Under worldwide protocols, the nation through which the accident came about will lead the general investigation.
Boeing shares fell greater than 4% early Monday after native officers called for inspections on 737-800s operated by South Korean airways, however pared earlier losses to finish the day down 2.3%.
