A Jeju Air flight has been forced to turn around after landing gear problems, just a day after South Korea’s deadliest aviation disaster in decades.
The Boeing 737-800 involved in the latest incident was the same model as the Jeju Air plane that crashed on Sunday, killing 179 people after it crashed without its landing gear engaged.
Families have endured an agonizing wait for confirmation that their loved ones were among those killed in yesterday’s crash, with officials painstakingly searching through more than 600 body parts in an attempt to match them, reports show.
At the crash site early Monday, a middle-aged man and a woman kept their gaze fixed through the fence, where the remains of the plane — seats, fences and twisted metal parts — were still scattered across the field near the charred tail.
The smell of blood lingers in the air as soldiers carefully comb through a reed field next to the runway, apparently looking for body parts.
The flight, which had been carrying 181 people from Thailand to South Korea, made a distress call and belly-landed before crashing into a barrier and bursting into flames.
Everyone on board Jeju Air Flight 2216 was killed, except for two flight attendants who were pulled from the burning wreckage. The youngest victim was a three-year-old boy.
This morning, another Jeju Air flight took off from Seoul’s Gimpo International Airport for Jeju Island but was forced to turn around after a landing gear problem was discovered shortly after takeoff, the South Korean airline said.
Soldiers carefully combed a field of reeds next to the runway
Mourners react near the scene where a Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 series plane crashed and caught fire at Muan International Airport
Rescuers work near the wreckage of the Jeju Air plane that went off the runway and crashed at Muan International Airport
A relative of a passenger at Muan International Airport on December 30
The destroyed tail section of the Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 aircraft that crashed and caught fire is seen at the end of the runway at Muan International Airport
“Shortly after takeoff, a signal indicating a problem with the landing gear was detected on the aircraft’s monitoring system,” Song Kyung-hoon, head of the management support office at Jeju Air, told a news conference.
‘At 6.57 am the captain communicated with ground control and after taking additional measures the landing gear worked normally again.
“However, a decision was made to return to the airport for a thorough inspection of the aircraft.”
Local media reported that 21 passengers chose not to board an alternative flight to Jeju, citing safety concerns and other reasons.
The airline has seen a sharp increase in the number of customers canceling their flight reservations since Sunday’s incident, with a total of 68,000 canceled tickets, Yonhap news agency reported.
Jeju Air’s fleet of 41 aircraft includes 39 Boeing 737-800 aircraft.
Seoul said on Monday it would conduct a special inspection of all 101 Boeing 737-800 aircraft in service in the country, with US investigators, possibly including from aircraft manufacturer Boeing, joining the investigation into the crash.
“We are reviewing plans to conduct a special inspection on B737-800 aircraft,” said Joo Jong-wan, head of the aviation policy office of South Korea’s Ministry of Transport.
Joo added that the government plans to “conduct strict aviation safety inspections in response to the (landing gear) incidents.”
A total of 101 planes operated by six airlines using the same model as the plane that crashed on Sunday will be “thoroughly assessed”, Joo said, adding that the inspections would last until January 3.
Sunday’s crash was the worst for any South Korean airline since a 1997 Korean Air crash in Guam that killed more than 200 people, Transportation Ministry data showed.
Devastated relatives of the victims demand answers from authorities.
Jeon Je-young, whose daughter Mi-sook was among the 179 people killed aboard Jeju Airlines Flight 2216, says he still cannot believe what happened.
“When I saw the video of the accident, the plane seemed to be going out of control,” the 71-year-old father said. ‘The pilots probably had no choice but to do it. My daughter, who is only in her mid-40s, ended up like this. This is unbelievable.’
Video of the plane’s approach shows it hitting a bird before circling the runway and attempting to land with its flaps up. Experts believe this indicates the plane suffered a hydraulic failure, which also prevented the landing gear from deploying.
This was stated by leading air safety expert David Learmount Sky News that having a concrete wall at the end of the runway was “borderline criminal” and said the collision with the wall was the “defining moment” of the disaster.
He suggested that if the wall had not been there, the plane would have instead hit a fence, skidded across a road and probably stopped in a nearby field.
‘I think everyone would have still been alive… the pilots might have suffered some damage going through the security gate or something like that. But I even suspect they may have survived,” Mr Learmount said.
Airline pilots also chimed in, saying the plane likely lost power from at least one engine and suffered a hydraulic failure after the plane was struck by a bird.
People are pictured in the photo of the wreckage of a plane that lay on the ground after it went off the runway and crashed at Muan International Airport, in Muan, South Korea, December 30
Jeju Air Flight 7C2216 goes up in flames after hitting a wall after crashing after landing at Muan International Airport
Leading air safety expert David Learmount told Sky News that having a concrete wall (pictured in satellite image) at the end of the runway was ‘borderline criminal’ and said the collision with the wall was the ‘defining moment’ of the disaster .
An unverified video recording from the Jeju Air plane shows a burst of fire coming from the plane’s right engine, believed to be the moment the bird struck
South Korea’s Acting President Choi Sang-mok pays tribute to the victims of the Jeju Air plane crash on December 29
Relatives of passengers of a Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 series aircraft gather in a makeshift shelter at Muan International Airport in Muan
After aborting an initial landing attempt due to a loss of power, the pilots landed on the runway at high speed on their second attempt – without deploying the flaps and deploying speed brakes that would normally slow the plane.
The thrust reverser, used to slow the aircraft once on the ground, was deployed on only one engine.
While the flaps and landing ear are powered by the hydraulic system, they can be manually extended in an emergency.
Captain Denys Davydov, who flies a Boeing 737-800 for Ukraine International Airlines, told the Times: ‘It looks like they had hydraulics to deploy the one reverser, but no flaps or landing gear… As a pilot of the same plane it’s very strange.’
Some experts said a bird strike alone would not have crippled the landing gear.
Australian safety expert Geoffrey Dell said: ‘I have never seen a bird strike that prevented the landing gear from being extended.’
Geoffrey Thomas, editor of Airline News, said bird strikes “do not generally in themselves cause the loss of an aircraft” and questioned why firefighters did not look at the plane as it landed on the runway.
He said: ‘Why weren’t they there when the plane landed? And why did the plane land so far down the runway? And why was there a brick wall at the end of the runway?’
But Joo Jong-wan dismissed concerns about the concrete wall after the end of the runway, saying that both ends of the runway “have safety zones with green buffer areas before reaching the outer wall,” the Independent reports.
He added that the airport was designed “according to standard aviation safety guidelines, even if the wall appears closer than it actually is.”