Crash of Jeju Air 737 at Muan International Airport, 29/12/2024

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WatcherZero

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A 737-800 flying from Thailand to Korea has run off the runway and hit a wall during a belly landing at Muan International Airport. Reported to be 173 Korean, 2 Thai passengers and 6 crew. 47 confirmed dead so far with 2 confirmed survivors (a passenger and a flight attendant). Early reports that a bird strike during the first landing attempt prevented the landing gear from deploying causing a go around, the plane was making a 2nd landing attempt on its belly when it skidded off the runway and hit a wall bursting into flames, the main fuselage fire was extinguished after 43 minutes but 2 hours later rescue efforts are still underway to free 23 trapped passengers in the still burning tail section .

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3we2p3l36jo
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2024/12/281_389314.html
Theres video of the apparent bird strike as it comes low over the coast with its landing gear up, but even if it lost hydraulics why would that prevent a gravity drop?
 
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The Airline has replaced its homepage with just an apology tab (blank at the moment), a newsfeed tab, and a family of victim contact form. It has removed all links to normal content, though you can still access the usual webpage by forcing the homepage to error out.
 
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Just before the fireball, I glimpsed part of the forward fuselage breaking off to the side—perhaps a partial telescope…mercifully. :(

Wasn’t there a push to have runways terminate with a crushable type of concrete to slow a slide-out?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_materials_arrestor_system
More:
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12/28/world/south-korea-plane-crash
On a side note—this shows just how quickly an aircraft’s mass can *disappear*…as per the Pentagon strike on 9/11.

Perhaps these new technologies can help:
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-05-algorithms-rare-kinds-failures-areas.html
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-05-redundant-aviation-safety-net-planes.html
For passengers
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-05-motion-sickness-technology-alleviate-symptoms.html
On turbulence:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/science/physics-airplanes-turbulence.html
 
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publiusr said:
Wasn’t there a push to have runways terminate with a crushable type of concrete to slow a slide-out?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_materials_arrestor_system
Click to expand...
There was, but that still takes distance that some airports may not have available.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/3...try=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MTIxMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw==It looks like there's ~500m from the south end of the runway to the perimeter fence. And about 500m on the north end to a crossroad. That's cutting it close for EMAS.

Also, plane was likely heavy, loaded with fuel, which greatly increases landing/sliding distances.
 
TomcatViP said:
No flaps too and fuel tanks were way too full for this kind of sport.
Panic?
Very sad as the belly landing itself was well executed.

(Notice the thrust reversers appear to be activated)
Click to expand...

Most importantly perhaps, by my crude reckoning they touched down more than halfway down the runway, leaving them with just 1.4km of stopping distance before impact with the localizer berm. That's far too late, given the speed resulting from the combination of high weight and lack of flaps. The root cause will likely be whatever compelled them to land in that spot and in that configuration - an exotic and fatal combination of technical issues, or a mishandling of a more benign and survivable event.

Based on a longer version of the video:
1735468906651.png
 
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You are absolutely right.
I can't however see that on the video above (landing distance). Could you kindly share the information source with us?

Edit:
Many thanks!
 
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Trident said:
Most importantly perhaps, by my crude reckoning they touched down more than halfway down the runway, leaving them with just 1.4km of stopping distance before impact with the localizer berm. That's far too late, given the speed resulting from the combination of high weight and lack of flaps. The root cause will likely be whatever compelled them to land in that spot and in that configuration - an exotic and fatal combination of technical issues, or a mishandling of a more benign and survivable event.

Based on a longer version of the video:
View attachment 754006
Click to expand...
Crap. That's even worse... They should have touched down no later than that taxiway in the middle of the runway!
 
Now sadly all passengers dead, two crew members survived who were in the tail section which broke off. When the plane struck the wall the majority of passengers were ejected from the fuselage into the air. The main fuselage burned to nothing.

Pilots requested an emergency landing on Runway 19 in the reverse of the Runway 01 direction the runway was operating, it had just aborted a landing attempt on Runway 01.

Both black boxes recovered, flight data recorder is damaged with data corrupted which they believe may take a month to forensically recover, but the cockpit voice recorder is fine.

The land ministry said in a briefing that an airport control tower had warned the aircraft of birds at 8:54 a.m. The pilot declared mayday at 8:59 a.m., and landed the plane at 9:03 a.m. without landing gear deployed.

https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20241229001063315?section=national/national
The concrete building the aircraft struck housed the airports Instrument Landing System aerials.
 
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First pass (see video above of bird strike), landing gear is retracted?!

Screenshot_20241229_180456.jpg

(did they simply forgot and got confused later on?)
 
Apparently Monday another Jeju aircraft returned to its origin, Gimpo Airport, because it couldn't raise its landing gear. (The airline uses exclusively 737-800 and 737-8 MAX)

Jeju until this week had a perfect safety record, its not like its an airline known for cutting corners on aircraft maintenance.
 
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Trident said:
Most importantly perhaps, by my crude reckoning they touched down more than halfway down the runway, leaving them with just 1.4km of stopping distance before impact with the localizer berm. That's far too late, given the speed resulting from the combination of high weight and lack of flaps. The root cause will likely be whatever compelled them to land in that spot and in that configuration - an exotic and fatal combination of technical issues, or a mishandling of a more benign and survivable event.

Based on a longer version of the video:
View attachment 754006
Click to expand...
No surprise if you see the footage from the other side of the runway. The plane hovers and glides just above the surface for almost 10 seconds due to ground effect. No wonder it has so less runway left for it to slow down. I should really wonder if the pilots forgot to lower the gears out of panic.
 
publiusr said:
Just before the fireball, I glimpsed part of the forward fuselage breaking off to the side—perhaps a partial telescope…mercifully. :(

Wasn’t there a push to have runways terminate with a crushable type of concrete to slow a slide-out?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_materials_arrestor_system
More:
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12/28/world/south-korea-plane-crash
On a side note—this shows just how quickly an aircraft’s mass can *disappear*…as per the Pentagon strike on 9/11.
Click to expand...
Mass does *not* simply disappear - please explain/elaborate on your thought process. My current best understanding is that the mass balances of both the aircraft and its passengers as well as the Pentagon structure and its occupants in the 9/11 incident were accounted for within reasonable tolerances, given the extreme situation, but please correct me if I'm wrong, citing authoritative sources.
 
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Road accidents can have mangled metal, but an 18-wheeler is still recognizable…it doesn’t turn to confetti like a more lightly built airframe.

Here pretty much all we have left is the tail.
With the Pentagon strike, you didn’t even have that as the building “ate” everything.

This incident is very like the Pentagon strike, in that very little of the mass is recognizable—a better word choice.

The Discovery Channel went out of their way to intentionally crash a 727–but how many airliner losses look similar to that test?

CFITs don’t leave much in the way of a fuselage on a mountain slope.

My main point is that this most recent incident can be used to debunk 9/11 “truthers” who think the Pentagon strike should have left big parts of the airframe recognizable….to the eye of the layman, the bulk of the airplane is “gone” when it has just been scattered.
 
martinbayer said:
Mass does *not* simply disappear - please explain/elaborate on your thought process. My current best understanding is that the mass balances of both the aircraft and its passengers as well as the Pentagon structure and its occupants in the 9/11 incident were accounted for within reasonable tolerances, given the extreme situation, but please correct me if I'm wrong, citing authoritative sources.
Click to expand...

I don't think anyone suggested that mass is literally gone, but more that the visible bulk of the aircraft can seem to "disappear." A seemingly solid airframe will shred itself into small fragments on high-speed impact with a hard structure.

9/11 conspiracy theorists are fond of dismissing the Pentagon impact by asking "where did the plane go?" Answer is it's all still there, just pulverized and compacted.
 
It's so heartbreaking... whatever the causes, they were succeeding in the classic emergency gear up landing: smooth on the belly and the jets.
Except they had gone past half the runway, and slammed into that wall.
 
What happened to that crushable end of runway concrete? It never got implemented? I imagine it would have saved lots of people already. This crash is puzzling apparently from the start of the emergency; they spent only 7 minutes before the landing attempt.
 
Its speculating, but if they lost an engine they may have felt they didn't have enough power to climb back to altitude again after the first abort and had to land immediately explaining the reverse runway landing. Particularly if their control of the aircraft was compromised and couldn't operate flaps.
 
In theory, the 737-800 should be able to climb at a 2.4% gradient with an engine out and gear retracted, given that it's certified to operate in the US; https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/25.121

"
(b) Takeoff; landing gear retracted. In the takeoff configuration existing at the point of the flight path at which the landing gear is fully retracted, and in the configuration used in § 25.111 but without ground effect:


(1) The steady gradient of climb may not be less than 2.4 percent for two-engine airplanes, 2.7 percent for three-engine airplanes, and 3.0 percent for four-engine airplanes, at V2 with:


(i) The critical engine inoperative, the remaining engines at the takeoff power or thrust available at the time the landing gear is fully retracted, determined under § 25.111, unless there is a more critical power operating condition existing later along the flight path but before the point where the airplane reaches a height of 400 feet above the takeoff surface; and


(ii) The weight equal to the weight existing when the airplane's landing gear is fully retracted, determined under § 25.111.
"
 
AGS-1787 said:
What happened to that crushable end of runway concrete? It never got implemented? I imagine it would have saved lots of people already. This crash is puzzling apparently from the start of the emergency; they spent only 7 minutes before the landing attempt.
Click to expand...
The wiki article says that it's only been implemented at a couple hundred airports, where there's not space for an overrun at the end of a runway.
 
WatcherZero said:
Its speculating, but if they lost an engine they may have felt they didn't have enough power to climb back to altitude
Click to expand...
I wonder if it was the opposite--pilot starts to slide---sees the berm --and guns it thinking "If I can just get up ten more feet--the wall will knock off nacelles and wings and I'll slide past the fireball." (but forgot about the thrust reversers---which may have dug in.)

Can you open just one thrust reverser in hopes of sloughing off more speed by sliding sideways?

Lastly--were there any studies about airliners having a small amount of ampulized nitric acid to burn with JP for a temporary rocket boost to get out of a jam?
 
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What ultimately doomed the occupants of the 737 is that massive concrete wall at the end of the runway, my understanding is that wall should never, ever have been placed there (Someone is going to catch it hot over that concrete wall).
 
This Guardian piece seems to imply the passengers were fully aware of the situation, and that there may have been damage beyond the bird ingestion.

“A bird is stuck in the wing. We can’t land,” one passenger on board the ill-fated Jeju Air flight 7C2216 sent out in a panicked text just before 9am on Sunday morning. “Should I write my final words?”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/30/jeju-air-flight-7c2216-text-messages-mayday
 
DWG said:
OTOH you have to ask what did Part 25 say in 1966 when the 737 was first certified? And was any of it grandfathered through to the -800 (and Max)?
Click to expand...

Possibly a good point. OTOH the aircraft went through massive changes between then and now in exactly the aspects relevant to this question (wing, engines). I'd tend to think it likely meets modern requirements in this regard.
 
Trident said:
DWG said:
OTOH you have to ask what did Part 25 say in 1966 when the 737 was first certified? And was any of it grandfathered through to the -800 (and Max)?
Click to expand...
Possibly a good point. OTOH the aircraft went through massive changes between then and now in exactly the aspects relevant to this question (wing, engines). I'd tend to think it likely meets modern requirements in this regard.
Click to expand...
The changes from 9 Jun 1995 would have applied. Grandfathering is mostly for systems (I worked a bunch last year with Boeing's ODA), the new wings, fuselage and engines make all of the performance stuff subject to the new regs.
 
Looking at the original vs the current version, the section in question seems to be virtually unchanged despite there being 4 revisions to the legislation.

1995 revision harmonised the US regulation with European regulations, in particular introducing the European Go Around Speed concept to the US regulations.
2002 revision changed stall speed from general aircraft stall speed to aircraft stall speed when performing the particular manoeuvre in question to remove ambiguity (as both variable and constant stall speeds were used interchangeably in the legislation).
2007 revision added requirement to test engines for icing (and added requirement for the one engine climb performance requirement to apply equally with and without ice accretion) as well as for control surface operation in a landing abort where the control surfaces are iced up.
2014 revision added extra provisions regarding engine icing, primarily for transport planes but to all aircraft engines to a lesser extent when encountering Supercooled large droplet icing conditions.
 
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