The remains of a Jeju Air plane that veered off the runway and crashed lie at Muan International Airport in Muan-gun, South Korea, on December 30, 2024.
Hongji Kim | Reuters
Aviation experts are questioning the role of the airport’s design in placing dirt mounds and concrete walls at the end of the runway where Jeju Air Flight 7C2216 crashed Sunday morning, killing all but two of the 181 people on board.
airplane, ah boeing Flight 737-800 landed by boat on the runway at Muan International Airport in southwestern South Korea after an overnight flight, with its flaps and landing gear apparently retracted. The jetliner burst into flames after hitting dirt and a wall where the localizer that guides the plane onto the runway was installed.
“Certainly this has made it difficult to safely stop aircraft,” said Todd Curtis, founder of Air Safe Media, which tracks aviation accidents and other incidents. Curtis worked as a safety engineer at Boeing for nearly 10 years.
It won’t be many more months before crash investigators determine the cause of the crash, the worst aviation disaster in South Korea’s history and the deadliest crash in years. They look at everything from aircraft maintenance records to pilot schedules, engines, and cockpit voice recordings.
Family members of Jeju Air crash victims are cheering as officials are briefing at Muan International Airport in South Korea on December 30, 2024.
Kim Soo-hyun | Reuters
Early evidence suggests bird strikes may have played a role in the possible engine loss. Experts warned that the investigation was at a very early stage.
Some aviation experts say the deaths could have been minimized if the plane had not hit the concrete wall.
In a video of the Jeju Air plane landing, “everything is going pretty smoothly until the plane skids, slows down, slows down and hits a wall,” said John Cox, an aviation safety consultant and a Boeing 737 pilot.
Cox said he suspected the cause of death for most of the passengers was “blunt force trauma from hitting a wall.”
Barriers over airport runways are common and recommended by international and other aviation authorities.
In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration requires a safety zone approximately 500 feet wide and 1,000 feet from the end of the runway to minimize damage if an aircraft overruns the runway. But the FAA says the Runway Safety Area Program has other mitigation measures in place because many U.S. runways were built before the standards were set.
“Although the original RSA improvement project has been completed, the program continues to evolve to address safety risks and plan for future improvements,” the agency says.
For example, New York’s LaGuardia Airport and other airports have Engineered Material Stopping Systems (EMAS) installed. This is a crushable material that slows planes over the runway and prevents them from rolling into more dangerous areas. In 2016, then-vice presidential candidate Mike Pence’s plane veered off the runway at LaGuardia Airport and was eventually stopped by EMAS.
According to video and expert analysis, the Muan International Airport runway edge barrier is of interest to investigators because it is not brittle or has the ability to break.
