Pre-flight checks found no problems, Jeju Air CEO says

A pre-flight inspection of a Jeju Air passenger plane hours before it crashed in South Korea, killing 179 people, found “no problems”, the airline said.

“Nothing abnormal was noticed with the landing gear,” the airline’s CEO Kim Yi-bae said at a press conference in Seoul, as investigations continued into why the wheels did not come down. when he made an emergency landing.

The plane was traveling from Bangkok when it landed at Muan International Airport on Sunday, bursting into flames and killing all but two crew members on board. after sliding into a wall.

Investigators are still working to identify the victims and determine what caused South Korea’s deadliest plane crash.

Many questions remain unanswered and investigators are looking at the role that a bird attack or weather conditions may have played.

They are also focused on why the Boeing 737-800 did not have its landing gear down when it reached the runway shortly after 09:00 local time (00:00 GMT) on Sunday.

Hundreds of grieving relatives were camped out at Muan airport, furious that they had yet to see the bodies of their loved ones.

So far, only a few of the remains of the victims have been released to their families. On Tuesday, four were transported to the funeral, but most of the other families are still waiting for their loved ones to be identified.

Responding to questions about the company’s safety procedures on Tuesday, Jeju Air CEO Kim Yi-bae said the plane would not have been cleared for takeoff if the maintenance team had not stopped the their security.

He said his pilots were trained to regulatory standards, and the company had two full flight simulators.

“We have 12.9 maintenance workers per aircraft, which is up from 12 in 2019,” he said.

“We have a strict maintenance checklist, it is not possible to forget things. If something was missing, it would be a serious problem.

“As for whether the landing gear worked properly, that is directly related to the accident investigation, and we are not in a position to know at this time.”

Mr Kim said the airline would reduce its air traffic this winter by 10-15%, so more maintenance work could be carried out on the aircraft, but said this was not an admission that the company had too much airplane

He added that they have increased their weather monitoring before and after flights.

Mr Kim also acknowledged that in the past five years, Jeju Air had paid the most fines and faced the most administrative action of any Korean airline – but said the company was constantly improving its safety record.

He said he was committed to strengthening the company’s security and maintenance procedures, adding: “We aim to restore your trust in us by strengthening our security measures.”

Mr. Kim said the airline was preparing emergency compensation for the victims’ families and would cover the cost of funerals.

The money will be released soon, he said, before the insurance process is completed. He added that the company’s employees are on site to provide psychological counseling to the families.

The 179 passengers on flight 7C2216 were aged between three and 78, although most were in their 40s, 50s and 60s, according to the Yonhap news agency. Two Thai nationals are among the dead and the rest are believed to be South Koreans, authorities said.

Many relatives are frustrated by how long the process of identifying the victims’ bodies has taken, but officials say it is challenging because those on board were so severely burned in the fire after the crash.

A man the BBC spoke to at the airport said his nephew and two of his nephew’s children had been on a celebratory trip to Thailand to mark the end of university entrance exams. All three died in the flight.

“I can’t believe the whole family just disappeared,” Maeng Gi-su, 78, told the BBC. “My heart hurts so much.”

Muan International Airport’s runway will remain closed for another week while forensic teams collect more of the remains and debris.

Investigators began inspecting the plane’s two black boxes — the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder — on Tuesday.

The second device is missing a critical connector, they say, which will make it harder to extract the data. This could extend the search for answers as to why this plane was forced to land without its landing gear.

Officials also said they are reviewing regulations around a concrete barrier that the plane hit when it skidded past the end of the runway.