South Korean air crash

[Capt Lightning]

I'm somewhat surprised that no mention of the recent air disaster with 179 deaths has been made here. It's a real mystery why the pilot tried to land half way down the runway without lowering the flaps or landing gear. It's a miracle that two of the cabin crew survived.

 

[Paco Dennis]

What a horrible accident. My condolences to all involved.

 

[Magna-Carta]

It's all very strange.

At around 9 a.m., air traffic controllers warned the flight crew of potential bird activity near the airport. A minute or two later, the crew issued a Mayday alert. Some news agencies have shown a video of a puff of smoke from the right engine while the plane was still in the air.

The pilot aborted the first landing attempt and then received permission to try again. It was reported that the plane then turned around and approached the runway from the opposite direction. The plane landed with no flaps or landing gear deployed, and to me, it looked as though the speed on landing was excessive. The runway is 2,800 meters long. Compare that to Healthrow's runways of 3,960 meters. JFK's runways vary from 2,560 meters to 4,423 meters.

It's not entirely clear from the footage, but some reports seem to think the plane was significantly down the runway before it came down on its belly. It seemed to then go down the runway in a straight line, but no engine reverse thrusters were in use from what I could see. The plane seems to hit a narrow earth embankment at the end of the runway, then a brick wall.

I wonder if there was so much going wrong with the plane, and in quick succession, that the pilots became overwhelmed with the workload. As far as I'm aware, if the landing gear fails to deploy, it's possible to lower it manually with a large leaver? The landing gear then lowers under its own weight.

 

[Talio]

 

[Magna-Carta]

Authorities have started downloading data from one of the two flight recorders. I wonder what they might discover?

From what was reported a day or two ago, the pilots gave a Mayday call at 08:59. They then aborted the initial landing attempt, flew around and made 'contact' with the runway at 09:02. What was so urgent that they needed to get down to the runway so quickly after the initial Mayday call, with no flaps extended or landing gear?

If one engine was out due to the birdstrike, I would think the procedure would dictate they fly around in a holding pattern so they can take the time to meticulously go through a checklist to configure the plane to land on one engine, along with flaps extended and gear down.

I wonder then if both engines were out, for whatever reason? With time running out, perhaps they kept the gear up, and without flaps, to reduce drag on the plane in order to give sufficient distance to turn around and attempt an emergency landing. With the gear down and flaps deployed the drag on the plane might have slowed the plane too much, and they may have not even made it to the runway.

As it happens, they did make it to the runway, and the videos on the news show a reasonably good 'landing' on its belly. But tragically they were then confronted with a concrete structure encased in earth at the end of the runway. Apparently, this structure was supporting a Landing System Localiser. Other airports around the world also have this system at the end of runways, but reported that they are designed in a way that is structurally quite weak, allowing them to collapse upon impact, to minimise damage to a plane that overshoots the runway.