Fiery plane crash kills 179 in worst airline disaster in South Korea
The deadliest air accident ever in South Korea killed 179 people on Sunday, when an airliner belly-landed and skidded off the end of the runway, erupting in a fireball as it slammed into a wall at Muan International Airport.
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I am wondering if the pilot thought he had gear. Reason being the speed and location of landing seen in the video of the crash. Runways are typically extra long in case of this kind of thing.
Comments on twitter indicate there's weirdness however you look at it
Since gear and flaps are set far before runway whatever went wrong was quite far back.
Slight possibility they had birdstrike on final approach and intended go around but then had another birdstrike and lost power (resulting in forced landing in flight configuration). shrugs
Last one is possible if unlikely. Probably won't know much more till the blackbox analysis is done. I am somewhat reminded of a rather famous crash that was caused by a pilot inviting his buddy who had some flight experience but not in that model of plane into the cockpit and had him do the landing. The buddy screwed up a couple of critical settings and the actual pilot didn't notice until it was way too late to prevent the crash. Not that I'm suggesting anything similar happened in this case, it was just a very similar style of crash.
And that one reminds me of the other one from long ago where the pilot invites a kid to sit in the seat, and in messing around the kid sends the plane into an unrecoverable crash.
Not pilot.
Go around is full power and still some flaps.
If they were on final, and followed procedures correctly, they were set to land something like 5k out. If they had another birdstrike it would be in landing configuration, not clean.
You also generally don't raise the gear until you have positive rate of climb, I only fly small planes, but the principal should be the same.
This plane looks like it's going way too fast and not in landing configuration. Maybe they couldn't get the plane into landing configuration due to some failure, that would require them to keep their speed up (flaps/slats reduce the landing speed), but even then it looked like they weren't slowing down, so maybe they were still under power?
Yup.
Something you might be able to comment on that I haven't seen discussed- are the reversers engaged? It looks like the cowling has come back, and if they tried but it didn't engage (on account of being dragged along a runway at 140kt) the could still be proving thrust.
I'm not an expert, I only fly small piston planes, but watching the video the cowling has opened as they do when the thrust reversers have been applied, however the engines are dragging on the ground so I'd assume that forced them open. I'm not sure if opening the exterior would engage the thrust reverser (i.e. is the external mechanism tied to the internal mechanism so they move together, or do they move independently?), if not then we can't conclude much from the video.
Per comments on reddit, the thrust reverser did deploy on one engine.
Yes thought I was probably wrong about that. Makes sense pulling gears isn't a priority in go around. (So we're not looking at them having retracted them)
All good - I can't remember if gear is pulled in a go around, but I presume it would only be after they have established a climb... you don't raise gear if your still going down.
Something that wasn't discussed- I think the reverses are engaged. The cowling looks like its been pulled back. You can't go around once reversers are engaged.
Hmm even weirder. Pilot on Reddit was saying very very few reasons for gear to be disabled. I believe with no mayday either?
One of the few I can think of is asymmetrical gear - one side deployed but not the other. Will cause a plane to dig into runway and spin/disintegrate. Maybe gear up was the plan, but too fast and too heavy with wrong configuration.
Believe landing would still be attempted w single working gear.. here's an occasion I remember from 97 at Heathrow. There have been more recent occasions too
I really don’t think it’s hydraulics - there are five pumps, two engine driven (including if it’s turned off and windmilling) and three electric (which can be battery driven) across three independent hydraulic circuits. The plane was also well controlled on approach which means they likely still had hydraulic flight surface control.
Wait... You can still put the landing gear down if the hydrolics are fucked?
Once they unlock (mechanical) gravity can pull them down to lock. You just can't get them up again and they create a lot of drag.
That's pretty cool. 😃
For people scared of flying - it is actually shocking how redundant and safe air travel actually is.
The number of things that can fail, thinga they have thought about and have a perfectly flyable and landable aircraft is one of the great achievements in human history. They don't even let pilots eat the same in-flight meal because of the possibility of food poisoning.
The last part is no longer a policy in almost all airlines worldwide,btw
Huh, seems like a weird change to make.
It was never a policy for most airlines and wouldn't really help too much as well - the menu items that are different are thoroughly heated(multiple times) and the menu items that could be an issue (=are cold)are coming from the same source. Furthermore it is extremely rare for airline food to cause food poisoning (like really really rare) and even less likely for them to cause food poisoning that incapacitate someone so fast an diversion landing is not an option. (And long haul has medication against the worst symptoms onboard) Norovirus e.g. would be a far more likely problem (and there has been at least one diversion landing because of it) and that is not food related at all.
Every plane is different and you can certainly get stuck with the gear up or unable to support the weight.
I watched a discussion from a former pilot who made it sound like the concrete structure that the plane ran into at the end of the runway was highly unusual and unnecessarily strong. Usually those locating beacons are mounted on very light plastic poles or on a tube frame. The heavy concrete foundation seems to be a significant factor in turning this from a rough emergency landing into a major disastor. I would imagine South Korea will revisit code for what kinds of structures can be built on the ends of runways after this.
Yes most certainly. Also the runway was undergoing maintenance which shortened it by about 10% at the other end. They claimed it had no impact on the disaster, but I can see a pilot coming in under duress and perhaps little control giving too much clearance to the maintenance work at the near end and ending up touching down far too far along the runway
Same touchdown zone regardless, but they could have floated while they waited for the non existent gear to touch down.
Also explains the lack of spoilers and why the wings are still generating lift - they are usually set to engage when there is pressure on the gear.