As if the country did not already have enough problems with its political crisis, South Korea yesterday suffered the worst air tragedy on its territory, with 179 deaths. Except for two survivors, there are all the occupants of the low-cost airline Jeju Air plane that crashed upon landing at Muan airport, in South Jeolla province and 300 kilometers southwest of Seoul. According to a creepy video broadcast on the MBC network, the device, a Boeing 737-800, attempted an emergency landing and ended up sliding on its belly at high speed along the runway until hitting a wall, which caused a huge explosion. As can be seen in the images, the plane did not deploy its landing gear, which makes investigators suspect that it suffered some type of technical failure caused, according to the first indications, by the collision with a flock of birds. Precisely, six minutes Before the incident, which took place at 9:07 in the morning (1:07 in the morning, Spanish peninsular time), the control tower warned of the danger of collision with birds, which at this time of year are usually wild ducks. . According to the South Korean news agency Yonhap, one of the witnesses to the accident, a 50-year-old man named Jung, saw that “when the plane was about to land on the runway, it collided with a flock of birds coming in the opposite direction.” “I heard two or three pops, as if the birds had been sucked into the engines, before I saw flames coming out of the right engine,” he added. Related News standard No The plane slides down the runway and hits a fence, causing a violent explosion Adrián Peñacoba The accident has been recorded and broadcast on South Korean television. According to the South Korean media, one of the passengers sent a text message from his mobile phone just before the accident. «A bird has been trapped in a wing and we cannot land. “Should I leave my last words?” he wrote to one of his relatives. And, as seen in another MBC video, the plane appears to hit something on its descent and a flash shines from its right engine. According to Yonhap, that spark was also seen by Yoo Jae-yong, 41, who He was in a house near the airport. “I was telling my family that there was a problem with the plane when I heard a loud explosion,” he said. Another witness, surnamed Cho, was taking a walk about 4.5 kilometers from the airport when the tragedy occurred. «I saw the plane descending and thought it was about to land when I saw a flash. Then there was a powerful bang followed by smoke in the air, and then I heard a series of explosions,” he said. The same thing was witnessed by another witness, Kim Yong-cheol, 70, who heard “metallic noises” and saw the plane ascending after failing its first descent. This was followed by a “powerful explosion” and “black smoke in the sky.” Despite these first suspicions, some aviation experts doubt that a bird strike could damage both the engines and the landing gear. “We have to analyze it, but it is very unusual for all three landing gears to fail,” the director of the Flight Education Center at Korea Aerospace University, Kim In-gyu, explains to Yonhap. In his opinion, “it is difficult to conclude that only the collision with birds is the reason. We also have to examine whether there were any defects in the plane. Incidents on the riseBut the truth is that incidents with birds have increased in recent years at South Korea’s 14 international and domestic airports. While in 2020 there were 70, in 2021 there were 109, in 2022 they reached 131 and last year they reached 152. Only at Muan airport, where the Jeju Air plane crashed, there have been ten bird strikes since 2019. until August. The number is even higher in Japan, which reported 1,499 collisions of this type in 2023, of which 59 caused significant damage to the planes. For the airline’s director, Song Kyung-hoon, the accident was not due to “problems “maintenance” but promises to investigate thoroughly to determine the reason. The investigation teams have already recovered the black boxes and the recordings in the cockpit, but the investigations could last several months. For the South Korean authorities, the most immediate thing is to identify the deceased, which will be difficult because the plane was devoured by the flames, and care for the families of the victims, who were returning from their vacation in Thailand. “I can’t believe the whole family is missing,” Maeng Gi-su, a 78-year-old man who had lost his nephew and his two children, lamented to the BBC. Of the 181 occupants, 175 passengers and six crew members , all were South Korean except two Thais and their ages ranged from three to 78 years old. The only two survivors are a 33-year-old steward and a 25-year-old stewardess, whose testimonies will be vital to knowing what happened to this fateful flight. But, at the moment, the steward does not remember what happened because he lost consciousness and did not regain consciousness until he was rescued. According to the ‘Korea Herald’ newspaper, the last thing he remembers was fastening his seat belt to land and, when he woke up in the hospital, he only managed to say: “What happened?” How come I am here?
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