South Korea's Jeju Air Plane Crashes at Muan International Airport

[Hogmann]

[wildaxboxer]

Originally Posted by Hogmann

Turns out the localizer antenna and it's foundation mound were less than a thousand feet from the runway just under 900 actually. That's close enough that in the US you could not build an earthen mound like that. And the antenna would have to be built on a breakaway structure whose foundation can be no more than 3" above the ground.

The design of this foundation mound absolutely contributed to the death toll. Yes there's a concrete wall around the airport a couple hundred feet after that but if the plane struck that it would have been nose on like crashing your car into a wall this localizer foundation created a ski jump if you will that sent the plane back up into the air breaking its back and causing it to in essence disintegrate.

Totally agree, should never have been put in place, more people would have survived even with contact with the wall

[akham]

The preliminary accident investigation report has been released, and is attached to this post.

[Hogmann]

They initiated a go-around for an unknown reason.on that go around they reported hitting birds and apparently lost all engine power. I wonder why they initiated the go around in the first place.
But this sounds to be a similar situation to the United Air flight Miracle on the Hudson that hit birds and had double engine failure.
In this case they were able to glide back to the airport just landed long. In essence a power off 180 a maneuver that is trained to pilots before they even get their license. However in this they seem to have been unable to extend any flaps or gear. Without the ability to add drag (flaps & gear), a power off 180 becomes significantly more difficult.

One thing that stands out to me is the number of flight hours the first officer had. 1600 hours is not a lot but it is enough to have an airline transport license in the United States what's especially surprising is that of those 1600 hours only 300 were in something other than the 737. So he began flying transport category aircraft when he had at most 300 hours possibly less. This is not uncommon in many parts of the world and wasn't uncommon in the United States many years ago.

[akham]

Originally Posted by Hogmann

They initiated a go-around for an unknown reason

I think, based on what we know so far, it is most likely the go around was initiated due to birds being sighted in the flight path.

The fact that a go around had been initiated before the bird strike is very important because it explains why the a/c wasn't configured for landing when the birdstrike happened.

But this sounds to be a similar situation to the United Air flight Miracle on the Hudson that hit birds and had double engine failure.

Except that in this case the energy state of the a/c was very different - it was low and slow, although very close to an airport.

Without the ability to add drag (flaps & gear), a power off 180 becomes significantly more difficult.

It appears that after the bird strike they had no electrics (aside from standby battery for very minimal systems) and little to no hydraulics (seems engine no 2 was completely dead, engine no 1 may have been providing some thrust but I'm unsure if that means there was any hyd pressure at all - Denys pointed out the different appearance between no 1 and no 2 on a landing video suggesting no 1 was running at least a bit).

Totally agree they needed to add some drag, and AFAIK the only option available to do that was a manual gear extension which does not require hydraulics or electrics. They would need to be quick, and I suspect that the usual imperative of avoiding drag until you know you can make the field took priority. It's probably not reasonable to expect them to forsee what happened so as to prioritize that choice.

But if they had managed to get the gear down they would have touched down earlier on the runway, they would have been slower, they would have had some braking and if there was still going to be an impact to the localizer structure (they might have been able to stop in time) it would have been less catastrophic to the airframe because it would be higher off the ground.

Its a shame the APU wasn't running to provide power, as they might have been able to get at least flaps 15 electrically and there is some electric hyd backup available. Apparently it takes 1 minute to start the APU, so if they had done that immediately they might have had 3 minutes of working electrics and some hydraulics before impact.

One thing that stands out to me is the number of flight hours the first officer had. 1600 hours is not a lot but it is enough to have an airline transport license in the United States what's especially surprising is that of those 1600 hours only 300 were in something other than the 737. So he began flying transport category aircraft when he had at most 300 hours possibly less. This is not uncommon in many parts of the world and wasn't uncommon in the United States many years ago.

Yeah, there has been a lot of debate over the 1500 hour rule and whether or not it makes a significant difference.

We will have to wait for the final report to see if any conclusions are drawn wrt F/O experience. Might be difficult to do that given the loss of relevant CVR.

[xvxchronoxvx]

Hogmann is right about the normal approach gear statement. I thought this was an example of of an approach that was anything except normal.

I am a pilot. I am aware of standard operating procedures. What I do not understand is why people feel the need to gasp things like "Why was that even there"?!?! and the such....I just feel like saying hey moron do you believe that you're the only genius to notice that they hit the thing off the runway.....upsie daisy guess we should'nt have put that there......Its idiotic.

Same with the gear thing (Hogmann's assesment still being the one reasonable one). Sometimes I do wonder if some people walk around actually thinking that the other people that created all of this stuff are really as stupid as they appear to be.

And to be clear, I do know that an ILS array may be on on an airport diagram but my question was why would it "need" to be. I was suggesting the level of dumb required for a flight crew to hit an ILS array that they literally just utilized to get there simply because it might be not on a diagram made my brain implode.

[MacAKM]

[Hogmann]

Anyone who's interested should watch that latest video update from Juan brown. It's really fascinating work that the Korean broadcasting system created. It does show they initiated a go around because of a huge flock of birds in the approach path and during the go-around they went through the flock and hit birds with at least the right engine. They then lost the left engine completely and the right engine partially. So why did they lose the left engine that's the big question. Did it suffer a complete failure and shut down or did they accidentally shut it down?

[Major_Tom]

I love the guy doing sign language

[Major_Tom]

Originally Posted by akham

A very good analysis from Hoover, a retired military aviator and current airline pilot. Addresses a number of points that have been discussed in this thread.

Pilot Debrief is a great channel.