Two people have been pulled from the burning wreck of a Jeju Airlines Boeing 737-800 that landed gear up at Muan Airport in southwestern South Korea. Video shows the plane sliding on its nacelles before hitting a wall or a fence and exploding. At least 47 people are confirmed dead and the total is expected to increase. Only the tail section appeared intact and that may have been where the two survivors were located. There were 175 passengers and six crew members on board and all except two Thai nationals were from South Korea. The flight originated in Bangkok.
Gear up landings have really short rollouts only if the touchdown is made early on the runway in some sort of landing configuration. Personally I’m standing by to hear why landing config was not established.
This accident does not scream anything just yet unless you’re a habitual conclusion jumper. You might at least consider letting the smoke dissipate and the CVR and FDR do their talking prior to you making your own screaming pronouncements. This airline has been in operating for two decades with a good safety record.
Godzilla was allegedly reported to be in the area. Godzilla’s past behavior suggests he got pissed off by low flying aircraft and took an aft to forward swipe at one on final approach tearing off its nose wheel and catapulting it forward accelerating final approach speed which resulted in a longer and faster approach which ended in a runway over run. Everybody knows this is what happened. The NTSB will confirm in five years what we already know now.
Wow, from the video, this guy was moving FAST.
Personally, I would have slowed down with full flaps and put it down at stall speed on the numbers. This guy looks to have whistled it in and carried way too much energy (so much so that he would have done the same thing if he tried to stop using wheels).
I certainly agree that speculation is loose and waiting for factual news will take time.
However, as noted, watching the video (which is not easy knowing real lives died suddenly) it is clear the plane was not configured to land, was travelling down the runway with what looked like power still to the engines (the plane did not decelerate due to drag with no power) and the nose was not dropped to the runway but stayed up until it hit the wall.
It looked like a plane flying as it dragged along the runway.
The CVR will be most important because nothing in the video suggested this plane was not set up to land.
The FDR will be important, because no landing gear deployed should have resulted in ago around way before the threshold.
I have my own thoughts based on the little I saw, but sadly, my fear is that root cause may be obfuscated, because that is what happens today.
This raises so many questions. There have been multiple 737NG pilots on YT (my experience is with the original -200 variant) that have pointed out discrepancies with the aircraft configuration as seen in the video. For example, no flaps appear to be extended. There is a back up electrical drive that will extend the Leading Edge Devices and limited Trailing Edge flaps in the event of a Hydraulic failure. The ADS-B data shows the aircraft traveling at 154 Knots on final approach. No spoilers are extended after touchdown, they would have to be deployed manually since no Main Landing Gear were extended to close the Air Ground Safety Sensor (Boeing term for squat switch). Also, there appears to be intermittent flame and smoke coming out the back of the right (no. 2) engine while in flight, there are reports of a bird strike. The Emergency Gear Extension system is dead simple mechanical, three handles in a floor compartment you pull on individually to release the mechanical uplocks on each wheel via a cable. The thrust reverser on the right engine is deployed, yet the left engine (the one not showing any issues in flight) is not. Too many questions.
Public conclusion jumping of this sort is unprofessional and never right regardless of whether or not the probable cause eventually matches premature conclusions.
Second hand guesswork and especially the downright idiotic comment referencing Godzilla speaks more to the new kind of audience this publication seems to have attracted in recent months.
Let the damn wreckage cool down before solving for X, please. And someone please clean up these comments.
With THAT MUCH ENERGY when it hit the wall…it’s not speculation.
Clearly he would not have been able not stop even if the gear was perfect and it was deployed! This should have been a non-fatality incident, not a screaming headlong over-run plunge into a retaining wall.
Well, you’re the be all and end all of all crash investigations. We can now eliminate world wide national accident investigation entities AND their budgets.
It does not take an “investigator” to see with your own eyes when a pilot lands way too fast and way too long. If you hit a wall at the end of the runway with that much energy then it’s neither a “landing” nor a “gear-up emergency” slide; it’s incompetence. Slow it down to minimum airspeed and then and POWER OFF over the numbers and you will be fine. Sheesh!
Is it possible they deployed the thrust reversers and powered-up the engines, but the reversers themselves couldn’t actually drop into place since the plane was sitting on the engines? Might explain the slowness of the decelleration.
Everyone has hit what I wanted to comment on, except: what is a concrete block wall doing at the end of the runway? Every airport I have worked at has had clear, unobstructed areas for hundreds or thousands of feet past the EOR, and where ILS antenna and approach lights are installed they are on break-away posts or mounts. As a tower operator, my first clue that a 737 had gone off the EOR in low VSBY conditions was the alarm going off that the ILS localizer had lost power, or was malfunctioning.
Talk about conclusion jumpers. You don’t get sarcasm at all. “atpcficto” was simply saying that Boeing will be blamed, as always, by the press even though the company had nothing to do with this crash.