Tragedy hit South Korea’s Muan International Airport as a Jeju Air Boeing 787-800 caught fire following an accident in which it plunged into a wall at the end of a runway and killed 179 passengers. An outraged world has been plunged into question of airport safety.
The whole fiasco started when the pilot reported an emergency landing after a bird strike. The landing was not as bad as it seemed until, missing critical landing gear deployment, the jet slammed into a concrete wall at the end of the runway, on a dirt embankment. Ironically, the wall contained a localizer, a navigational system for planes coming in to land that proved to be a deadly obstacle.
The wall’s location was criticized by experts, including air safety specialist David Learmont. “Had that structure not been there the jet would have come to rest, saving many lives,” he said. This echoed from Lufthansa pilot Christian Beckert, who said: “Normally, at the end of a runway, you don’t have a wall.”
Further scrutiny revealed another glaring issue: the wall’s rigidity. Chris Kingswood, a veteran pilot said ‘Runway obstacles should be frangible, breaking on impact, to reduce damage.’ “The tragedy directly contributed to this wall’s unusual hardness”. The jet overshot the runway at speed as it slammed into a structure that should have implemented standard safety measures.
That adds to the controversy, because airport officials had previously flagged the wall’s proximity to the runway. Instead, they delayed changes until an airport expansion plan was completed.
It is one of the world’s latest and deadliest aviation disasters, fueling calls for stiffer enforcement of safety guidelines at airports around the globe. The tragedy remains a grim reminder of the catastrophic results of oversight in aviation infrastructure as investigations continue. Experts now want a global rethink on runway-end safety standards to avoid such calamities in the future.
