The country will inspect its entire airline operations as well as all Boeing 737-800s after 179 people died in a crash involving the aircraft model on Sunday.
South Korea’s acting president has asked for an emergency safety inspection of the country’s whole airline operations as well as a check of all Boeing 737-800s, after 179 people died when a Jeju Air aircraft skidded off a runway on Sunday.
The interim government said it would carry out the audit of all of South Korea’s 101 Boeing 737-800 models with US investigators, including Boeing, possibly joining the probe.
South Korean officials have struggled to determine exactly what caused the deadly plane crash that killed 179 out of 181 people onboard — the country’s worst aviation disaster in decades.
The plane, operated by South Korea’s budget airline Jeju Air, skidded off a runway at Muan International Airport before slamming into a concrete fence and bursting into flames. Only two crew members survived the crash after they were pulled from the plane’s tail section.
Alongside a probe into the aircraft model, South Korea’s Transport Ministry said it would investigate the airport’s localiser —a concrete fence housing a set of antennas designed to guide aircraft safely during landings — after experts suggested it should have been made with lighter materials that would have broken up more easily on impact.
Video of the disaster indicated that the pilots did not manually lower the aircraft’s landing gear or deploy flaps or slats to slow the plane down, the latter suggesting a possible hydraulic failure said John Cox, a retired airline pilot and CEO of Safety Operating Systems in St Petersburg, Florida.
Other experts said videos showed the plane suffering suspected engine before its landing gear malfunctioned.
The Transport Ministry said Sunday the control tower issued a warning about birds to the Jeju Air plane shortly before it intended to land and gave the crew permission to land in a different area. It said the plane’s pilot sent out a distress signal shortly before the crash.
Investigators retrieved the jet’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders, but it may take months to complete the probe into the crash, Joo, the Transport Ministry official, told reporters.
The Muan crash is South Korea’s deadliest aviation disaster since 1997, when a Korean Airlines plane crashed in Guam, killing 228 people on board.
The investigation into the crash was ordered by acting president Choi Sang-mok, who took on the role just two days prior after the successive impeachments of President Yoon Suk-yeol and his acting successor Han Duck-soo.
“The essence of a responsible response would be renovating the aviation safety systems on the whole to prevent recurrences of similar incidents and building a safer Republic of South Korea,” said Choi, who is also deputy prime minister and finance minister.
Observers have openly worried how effectively the current interim government in South Korea could the aftermath of the crash. The country has been thrust into political turmoil after former president Yoon issued a short-live martial law decree that resulted in his impeachment and that of his successor.
Amidst the crisis, the country’s safety minister stepped down and its police chief has been arrested over their role in the martial law decree.
“We are deeply worried if the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters really can handle the disaster,” the mass-circulation JoongAng Ilbo newspaper said in an editorial on Monday.
Additional sources • AP