This is a black week for civil aviation, which after the shooting down of an Embraer 190 by Chechen anti-aircraft fire, has to mourn another 179 deaths in South Korea, in what represents the worst air tragedy in the history of the Asian country. A Boeing 737-800 of the Jeju company, with registration HL-8088, which was operating flight 7C-2216 from Bangkok (Thailand) to Muan (in South Korea), with 175 passengers and 6 crew members on board, suffered a serious episode of bird ingestion into the engines (and probably also other impacts with significant damage), therefore attempting to land on Muan runway 19 at 09:03 local, 1:03 Italian. From what emerged thanks to testimonies, videos and reconstructions provided by witnesses, the aircraft touched the 2,800 meter long runway already more than halfway due to ongoing failures, including those of the engines and probably also of the extraction system emergency of the landing gear and flaps, therefore making contact with the ground very quickly. From the images you can clearly see the airplane crawling on the runway supported by the engine nacelles and on its belly, until it went over the end of the runway by more than 300 meters and crashed, still at high speed, against a concrete and iron structure located at the side of the airport grounds, where the tanks exploded killing all the people on board except two of the flight attendants, sitting on the seats in the rear part of the plane. Initially the crew had reported the malfunction of the landing gear, a failure probably caused by an impact with birds, announcing that they would perform a go around, to return to land. The aircraft then attempted a second approach which ended in disaster. It is difficult to understand, at the moment, why the airport’s emergency organization did not spray the runway with foam, or why the crew was unable to slow the plane down and set it up for landing. But these latter conditions will be clarified by the analysis of the flight recorders recovered by the firefighters who intervened to put out the flames. The details reported so far were also confirmed by the South Korean Ministry of Transport, whose spokespersons reported that the bird strike warning had been communicated at 08:57 local time, approximately 6 minutes before the accident, and about a minute later the crew declared Mayday (emergency), finding themselves on final approach to runway 01. The Muan control tower authorized the plane to land on the opposite runway (19, i.e. from the opposite direction, ed.), and the plane crashed 5 minutes after declaring Mayday. An observer on the ground near final approach reported that the aircraft flew through a flock of birds, that several bangs were heard as if the birds had been ingested by the engines, and that flames were seen from the engine. right. All this was then confirmed by a video released by witnesses on social media. At that point the airplane appears to have gained little altitude to land again from the opposite direction of the runway (to the south). Some events therefore remain to be understood, such as the opportunity to return for landing, losing further time, why the crew was unable to extract the landing gear and whether the concrete building against which the airplane crashed was positioned according to the international regulations for airport constructions, namely Annex 14 of the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation). Some media have also reported adverse weather conditions, however the analysis of the bulletins issued in the area seems to deny these conditions, with winds of 210 degrees (therefore with a 30° difference from the landing direction) and only 5 km/h, practically nothing for a Boeing 737-800, but also ten kilometers of horizontal visibility, therefore excellent, and little cloud cover at around 1,600 meters above sea level, with a temperature of 6 °C. The technical investigation will be conducted by South Korean, Thai and American personnel, as Boeing is built in the USA.
