Various interpretations have emerged regarding the cause of the deadly airliner crash in South Korea’s southwestern county of Muan on Sunday, with initial investigations pointing to airframe failure following a “bird strike” as the main culprit.
The exact cause remains uncertain but some analysts are already suggesting alternative reasons, including technical glitches, arguing both the engines and brakes on both sides of the plane must have failed for such a crash but that a bird strike alone could not have caused such simultaneous failures in all critical components.
The Jeju Air passenger jet carrying 181 people approached Muan International Airport, located 288 kilometers southwest of Seoul, at around 8:54 a.m, reports Yonhap news agency.
The plane declared mayday at 8:58 a.m., just one minute after the control tower at the airport issued a bird strike warning, and attempted to land going in the opposite direction of the runway at 9:00 a.m., according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.
Three minutes later the aircraft crashed into a fence wall without its landing gear extended. It was unable to slow down before it reached the end of the runway, and hit the wall.
Aviation experts largely agreed that the inoperable landing gear was a direct cause of the crash.
“If you look at the video, the landing gear didn’t extend, and the plane crashed with very little loss of speed,” said professor Choi Kee-young from Inha University. “An airplane has multiple brakes, and if the landing gear doesn’t work, the reverse-propelled engines lift the wing flaps, which act as airbrakes. But they didn’t seem to have worked in this case.”
Experts identified the bird strike as the most likely cause of the landing gear malf
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