The Korea crash

A missed miracle?

If you’ve been missing me, my son has been home on leave over Christmas so I’ve been away from the computer to spend time with the family. I did want to step into say a few quick words about the Jeju crash in South Korea.

It hasn’t been a good holiday season for airline travel. Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 was apparently shot down by Russia on Christmas Day and a South Korean airliner crashed a few days later.

The New York Times has the best rundown of the facts that I have seen so far in the worst crash in Korean history. On the morning of December 29, Jeju Air Flight 7C2216, a Boeing 737-800, crashed at Muan International Airport within minutes of receiving a warning about bird activity. This is a very common caution from controllers,

At 8:59 am, the pilot reported a bird strike and declared an emergency. Per the Times report, the pilot also announced a go around or missed approach after being warned that the landing gear was not down. The plane originally intended to land to the north. Normally, a go around is followed by a traffic pattern in which the plane flies a rectangular course to return and land on the same runway.

That’s not what happened here.

On Sunday, the Jeju pilots reportedly made a tight turn back to the airport to land in the opposite direction. Video shows the plane skidding down the runway at high speed with no landing gear and no flaps deployed. Flaps are typically deployed for landing to help the airplane fly slower.

Something that the Times mentions that is not apparent from the video is that the aircraft touched down approximately halfway down the runway. On a normal landing, pilots aim for the first 3,000 feet (or the first third if less) of the runway. The possibility of touching down so far from the end of the runway would normally trigger another go around.

The plane was unable to stop in the remaining runway and erupted into a fireball when it hit a concrete structure housing an antenna for the localizer, a navigational aid. Only two people survived.

The flight recorders (black boxes) were reportedly damaged so the data may not be accessible for several weeks, but I think there are enough clues to make an educated guess as to what happened. The question is why an experienced airline captain would make such a quick turn and land halfway down the runway with no gear and flaps.

It is the lack of landing gear and flaps that provides a major clue. In most jets, the landing gear and flaps are moved by hydraulic pressure. The hydraulic pressure comes from hydraulic pumps attached to the engines.

If the airplane loses both engines, it loses hydraulic pressure. There are alternate extension systems for the landing gear as well as a redundant system for flaps on the 737. The problem is that these systems require time (and often physical effort). If both engines failed at a few hundred feet on a go around, there would not be time to activate them.

There also would not be time to fly a traffic pattern around to the active runway. Landing into the wind is preferable, but the crew may not have had a choice if they had no engine power.

I think that a likely scenario is that the crew hit a flock of birds and lost both engines. It isn’t clear if the crew initially neglected to lower the landing gear or if the gear problem was related to the bird strike or a separate mechanical problem.

A dual engine failure at low altitude is a nightmare scenario and similar to what happened in the Miracle on the Hudson in 2009. Cap. Sullenberger made the decision to land in the Hudson River rather than turn towards an airport. I think that, presented with a similar scenario, the Jeju captain tried to make the runway. He made it, but wasn’t able to stop. The fact that he landed with a tailwind may have contributed to both the midfield touchdown and the overrun since landing with a tailwind means a higher ground speed and longer landing distance.

This is all speculation, but it fits the available facts. If I’m right, the crew was faced with a near impossible situation. They needed another miracle but didn’t get it.

This is only a hypothesis based on the available information. An official determination of the cause may be months in coming, but we should have a much clearer idea of what happened within a few weeks.

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