January 2, 2025
SEOUL – Sunday’s tragic Jeju Air jet crash at Muan International Airport was caused by complex factors. A bird strike is blamed as the primary cause, while aircraft and runway problems are suspected as well. Also, fundamental questions are being raised about whether the location of the airport was proper in the first place. A thorough investigation of the incident is required.
According to the Land Ministry, controllers warned about a possible bird strike shortly before the plane in question landed. About a minute after the warning, the plane’s pilot made a mayday call to the control tower, and five minutes after the mayday signal, the plane hit the wall at the perimeter of the airport, erupting into a fireball. Witnesses reportedly said they saw birds sucked into the right engine.
Bird strikes are an issue of airport management. Among 14 provincial airports across the country, Muan International Airport had the highest rate (0.09 percent) of bird strikes compared to the number of flights processed from January 2019 to August 2024, according to data from Korea Airports Corp. There are habitats of migratory birds and wetlands conservation areas nearby. The risk of bird strikes was raised when the airport project was reviewed, but the recommended steps to minimize the risk are said not to have been properly taken. A probe of the airport’s efforts to prevent bird strikes is needed.
The plane belly-landed without its landing gear down. Landing gear can be manipulated manually, according to experts. Why the mechanism was not deployed is one of the key issues to be investigated. This might have something to do with aircraft maintenance or pilot error.
The concrete wall that the jet collided with at the boundary of the airport evokes questions, too. If it were made of something like wire mesh, the belly-landing might not have led to such a big accident. Authorities should examine whether there were regulation violations or design problems.
Though the ministry argues that the length of the runway is not a direct cause of the accident — the Muan airport runway is 800 meters shorter than those at Gimpo International Airport — it is hard to deny that if it had been longer, a collision with the wall might have been avoided.
From a long-term perspective, the operations of provincial airports need to be inspected. Actually, many of them were built under politicians’ pork-barrel pledges rather than out of pure economic necessity. Muan International Airport is one such airport. There was opposition to the Muan Airport project from the beginning because Gwangju Airport is already about an hour’s drive from its location. Its construction was completed in 2007, but the airport has made a loss each year due to a lack of users. Loss accumulation is likely to lead to poor management. The Muan-Bangkok route of the Jeju Air flight involved in Sunday’s accident began on Dec. 8. It was the first regular international route to be managed by Muan Airport. Its ability to deal with international flights should be probed.
It is unfortunate that an air crash like this happened in the middle of a chaotic political situation in the country. The government is managed under “the second acting president for the acting president” who was impeached. Acting President Choi Sang-mok rushed to the scene to control the situation and designated Muan as a special disaster zone. The government has a lot of work on its hands, including preparing funerals, investigating the accident and restoring the airport. It should use all available resources to pick up the pieces.
Even though it is important to quickly resolve political turmoil in the wake of the presidential impeachment, rival parties should stop fighting each other and cooperate with the government until the tragedy is overcome.