A few days after the deadly plane crash in South Korea, the focus is on the wall where the low-cost airline Jeju Air crashed. Aviation experts suspect that there would have been fewer casualties if this ‘obstacle’ at the end of the runway had not been there.
During the devastating emergency landing at Muan Airport on Sunday, the plane landed without its landing gear deployed, overshot the runway and burst into flames when it crashed into a concrete wall. 179 of the 181 people on board died, two flight attendants survived in the rear of the plane.
Experts now believe the tragedy could have been much less serious. Aviation safety expert David Learmount told the BBC that if this ‘obstacle’ had not been there, the plane ‘would have come to a standstill and most – possibly all – of the occupants would still be alive’. The concrete wall is located approximately 250 meters from the end of the runway.
Expert confirms properly executed emergency landing
According to Learmount, the landing was “as good as a landing without flaps and landing gear can be: the wings were flat, the nose not too high to prevent the tail from breaking off.” Furthermore, the aircraft did not sustain any significant damage as it skidded along the runway.
Expert: Wall “shouldn’t have been there”
“The reason so many people died was not the landing itself, but the fact that the plane struck a very hard obstacle just past the end of the runway,” Learmount said. Another aviation analyst agrees: “Unfortunately, this thing was the reason everyone died, because it literally crashed into a concrete structure. “It shouldn’t have been there,” Ross Aimer, director of Aero Consulting Experts, told Reuters.
Lufthansa pilot Christian Beckert described the concrete structure as “unusual” and explained: “Normally there is no wall at an airport with a runway at the end.” The South Korean news agency Yonhap explained that behind the wall there was a navigation system that helps planes land. Normally these must be made of materials that break during an aircraft impact.
Source: Krone
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