Officials have not confirmed whether the plane did in fact collide with any birds.
But a passenger on the flight messaged a relative, saying that a bird “was stuck in the wing” and that the plane could not land, local media reported.
Lee Jeong-hyun, the chief of the Muan fire department, said a bird strike and bad weather may have contributed to the crash – but that the exact cause was still being investigated.
Aviation expert Chris Kingswood, a pilot who has over 40 years’ experience and has flown the same type of aircraft involved in the crash, says video footage doesn’t clearly show the cause of the incident.
However, he noted the plane was without its landing gear and wasn’t using its flaps in the expected way, suggesting that “everything happened really quite quickly”.
“You would normally be forced into that kind of situation if you lose both engines,” he told the BBC. “A commercial aeroplane can fly reasonably well and safely on one engine.”
He added that altitude is crucial if a bird strike damages both engines, as pilots at low altitude would face “a huge number of decisions in a very short space of time”.
He said there is an alternative system to operate both the landing gear and flaps if the engines fail.
But according to Kingswood: “If they were at a relatively low altitude, just several thousand feet, then they’ve really got to focus on flying the aeroplane and finding somewhere safe to put it down.”
Other experts have questioned whether a bird strike alone could have caused the crash.
“A bird strike is not unusual, problems with an undercarriage are not unusual,” Geoffrey Thomas, the editor of Airline News, told Reuters.
“Bird strikes happen far more often, but typically they don’t cause the loss of an airplane by themselves,” he added.
Australian airline safety expert Geoffrey Dell told the news agency: “I’ve never seen a bird strike prevent the landing gear from being extended.”
He said a bird strike could have impacted the plane’s engines if a flock had been sucked in, but it would not have shut them down straight away, meaning pilots would have had time to deal with the situation.