South Korea plane crash

[Chippy_Tea]

They are saying they think a bird strike caused the undercarriage to fail, how could a bird cause that?

• A plane crash at Muan International Airport in South Korea has killed 179 people. Two people - both flight crew members - have survived what could be the country's worst aviation accident
• The Boeing 737-800 flight - operated by airline Jeju Air - had 181 people on board including six flight staff and was arriving from Bangkok, Thailand
• Families of the victims are congregating at the airport as one man - whose nephew and two great-nephews were on the flight - says "I can't believe the entire family has disappeared, my heart aches so much"
• Footage from the scene shows the plane coming off the runway and crashing into a wall, before bursting into flames
• Every few minutes, we hear wailing echo through the airport terminal where relatives of those killed have gathered, writes BBC's Jake Kwon from the airport

 

[MashBag]

Yes indeed. Very strange.

I heard initially it was emergency landing after engine failure from bird strike which might explain. 737 is very good so landing gear failure is unlikely.??

 

[Chippy_Tea]

The landing gear was not down it landed and skidded into the wall, a pilot said the approach angle was fine the speed a little high the wings flaps were in the landing position and if the undercarriage was down it would have landed safely.

 

[Rodcx500z]

No landing gear down surely someone in the control tower would have noticed and told the crew to do a go round while they tried to sort it, they could have laid a foam fire blanket down and had fire services there, seems very strange

 

[MashBag]

No landing gear down surely someone in the control tower would have noticed and told the crew to do a go round while they tried to sort it, they could have laid a foam fire blanket down and had fire services there, seems very strange

I said that (foam) to Mrs Mash earlier. Very strange

 

[hoppyscotty]

Sounds very strange to me...aircraft undercarriage should be able to drop under gravity in the even of a total hydraulic failure so even a bird strike to the engines causing total hydraulic failure shouldn't prevent the undercarriage to not be able to be deployed. Obviously something had occurred to prevent the undercarriage deployment, it has happened before (most recent I can think of is the Polish LOT 767 belly land where they did use foam) so there are failure mechanisms, but I believe that the 737 undercarriage is different so the same failure mechanism that prevented the 767 failure to gravity deploy the undercarriage is not an issue for the 737, so a big question as to why they couldn't deploy the undercarriage.



And other things that all contribute to the outcome is that it appears the wing flaps and slats don't seem to be deployed so a much higher landing speed, and it touched down halfway down the runway. Tragic accident as it was so preventable. If there was not a huge concrete structure at the end of the runway then everyone would have walked away from that. I'm amazed that having such a structure within the airport perimeter is acceptable.

Usually aircraft accidents are due to many many factors and not one single factor...so I suspect there will be multiple failures identified that lead to the belly landing in the first place.