South Korea Officials said Monday they will conduct safety inspections of all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by the country’s airlines, as the struggle to determine which caused a plane crash that killed 179 people a day earlier.
Sunday’s crash, the country’s worst aviation disaster in decades, sparked an outpouring of national sympathy. Many people worry about how effectively the South Korean government will handle the disaster as it faces a leadership vacuum following the recent back-to-back impeachments of President Yoon Suk Yeol and Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, the country’s two top officials. , amid a political uproar caused by Yoon. brief imposition of martial law earlier in the month.
Newly acting President Choi Sang-mok on Monday chaired a working group meeting on the crash and ordered authorities to conduct an emergency review of the country’s aircraft operating systems.
“The essence of a responsible response would be to renew aviation security systems in general to prevent the repetition of similar incidents and build a safer Republic of South Korea,” said Choi, who is also the prime minister and the finance minister.
The Boeing 737-800 plane operated by South Korean budget airline Jeju Air aborted its first landing attempt for reasons that were not immediately clear. Then, during his second landing attempt, he received a bird alert from the ground control center before his pilot issued a distress signal. The plane landed without its front landing gear deployed, overshot the runway, crashed into a concrete fence and erupted in a fireball.
Alan Price, a former chief pilot for Delta Air Lines and now a consultant, said the Boeing 737-800 is a “proven aircraft” that belongs to a different class of aircraft than the Boeing 737 Max jetliner that was linked to fatal crash in 2018. and 2019.
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But South Korea’s Transport Ministry said Monday it plans to conduct safety inspections of all 101 Boeing 737-800 jetliners operated by the country’s airlines, as well as a broader review of safety standards. security at Jeju Air, which operates 39 of those planes. Senior ministry official Joo Jong-wan said representatives from the US National Transportation Safety Board and Boeing were expected to arrive in South Korea on Monday to participate in the investigation.
Ministry officials also said they will examine whether Muan Airport’s locator – a concrete fence that houses a set of antennas designed to guide planes safely during landing – should be done with lighter materials that will break more easily on impact.
Joo said the ministry has determined that similar concrete structures are at other domestic airports, including in Jeju Island and the southern cities of Yeosu and Pohang, as well as airports in the United States, Spain and South Africa.
Video of the crash indicated that the pilots did not deploy flaps or slats to slow the aircraft, suggesting a possible hydraulic failure, and did not manually lower the landing gear, suggesting they did not have time , said John Cox, a retired airline pilot. CEO of Security Operating Systems in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Despite that, the jetliner was under control and traveling in a straight line, and the damage and injuries likely would have been minimized had it not been for the barrier being so close to the runway, Cox said.
Other observers said the videos showed the plane was suffering from suspected engine problems, but the landing gear malfunction was likely a direct cause of the crash. They said there would likely be no link between the landing gear problem and the suspected engine problem.
Earlier Monday, another Boeing 737-800 plane operated by Jeju Air returned to Seoul’s Gimpo International Airport shortly after takeoff when the pilot detected a landing gear problem. Song Kyung-hoon, a Jeju Air executive, said the problem was resolved through communication with a ground crew center, but the pilot decided to return to Gimpo as a precautionary measure. .
Joo said officials were reviewing whether there might have been communication problems between air traffic controllers and the pilot. “Our current understanding is that at some point during the descent process, communication became somewhat ineffective or was interrupted, prior to landing and impact,” he said.
Ministry officials said on Monday that the plane’s flight data and cockpit audio recorders had been transferred to a research center at Gimpo Airport before being analyzed. Ministry officials previously said it would take months to complete the investigation into the crash.
The Muan crash is South Korea’s deadliest aviation disaster since 1997, when a Korean Airlines plane crashed in Guam, killing 228 people on board.
The crash left many South Koreans in shock and shame, with the government announcing a seven-day national mourning period until January 4. Some wondered if the crash involved safety or regulatory issues, like a 2022 Halloween crush in Seoul that killed 160 people and a 2014 ferry sinking that killed 304 people.
The Transport Ministry said authorities have identified 146 bodies and are collecting DNA samples and fingerprints from the other 33.
Park Han Shin, a representative of the bereaved families, said they were told the bodies were so damaged that officials needed time before returning them to their families.
“We demand that the government mobilize more personnel to return our brothers and family members as intact as possible as quickly as possible,” he said, choking back tears.
The crash was also more important news for South Koreans already reeling from a political crisis sparked by Yoon’s martial law decree, which brought hundreds of troops onto the streets of Seoul and revived traumatic memories of the government military past in the years 1970-80.
The political turmoil resulted in the opposition-controlled National Assembly impeaching Yoon and Han. The security minister resigned and the police chief was arrested for his role in enforcing martial law.
The absence of senior officials responsible for disaster management has led to concerns.
“We are very concerned about whether the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Center can really handle the disaster,” the mass-circulation JoongAng Ilbo newspaper said in an editorial on Monday.
© 2024 The Canadian Press
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2024-12-30 12:29:00
