Posted on 12/31/2024 3:17:47 AM PST by Libloather
Aviation experts are raising serious questions about a curious concrete wall near the end of an airport runway in South Korea — after a catastrophic crash killed 179 people on board a Jeju Air flight on Sunday.
The Boeing 737 jet erupted in a fireball — killing all but two people on board Flight 7C2216 — after it skidded off the end of the runway at Muan International Airport and slammed into the structure.
Air safety specialists are now questioning why it was there at all.
David Learmount, a former pilot and flying instructor for the UK’s Royal Air Force, said he had “never seen anything like this.”
“Not only is there no justification [for it to be there], I think it’s verging on criminal to have it there,” Learmount, who is now operations and safety editor of Flight International magazine, told Sky News.
“To have a hard object about 200 meters [about 660ft] or less into the overrun, I’ve never seen anything like this anywhere ever before,” he added. The structure was located about 820ft off the end of the runway.
**SNIP**
Ju Jong-wan, director of the Aviation Policy Division at South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, explained to the New York Times that the structure was built to install the so-called localizer antenna, which helps enable the pilot to maintain the correct approach path.
He insisted that it was built according to regulations and that similar walls were found in other airports in South Korea.
However, Hwang Ho-won, chairman of the Korea Association for Aviation Security, told the outlet that if the antenna had been made of a different material, the tragedy might have been avoided.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
93% of all professional accidents are caused by experts :)
When will we learn to stop trusting them blindly.
The wall apparently was the support for the instrument landing system. It also protected hotels and apartment buildings on the other side from a plane crash. How many additional people might have been killed if the wall hadn’t been there?
Jet blast walls are a thing, too.
Also lots of trees. The number of airports with runway runoff fields is really quite small. Cities tend to grow around airports. Pick a random major airport, go into Google Maps “Satellite” view, and look at the ends of some runways. Start with, say, DCA.
The plane landed on runway 19 (from the northern end). It was oriented toward the sea, so there were no hotels or apartment buildings to protect.
Look at the three minute mark on the attached video. This guy did an excellent analysis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzBKCt8-uWg
American airports have the same ILS antennae at the ends of the runway. But they’re on poles designed to shear away if struck by a plane, and their bases are flush with the ground.
CC
At least in North America, there are rules about how much flat ground there is supposed to be past the end of the runway.
But most of the existing airports don’t meet them, and they were all grandfathered in.
In a lot of cases you overshoot you end up in the ocean, but that is better than hitting a bunker that creates nonsurvivable decelerations.
Every airport has beacons and instruments at the end of the runways. But I’ve never seen them be built inside a concrete bunker.
Imagine if the NHRA used this sophisticated strategy, a nice beautiful ‘safety’ wall at the end of the dragstrip.
Looks like we need more H-1B engineering geniuses from South Korea, only the best!
So from now on all airports will have to install endless runways.
The FAA has specific regulations for the required lengths of the Runway Protection Zone at ends of the runways. These are based on the size of the airplanes that the airport is rated from Category A (small general aircraft) to Category D (large commercial jet aircraft).
All federally registered airports are eligible for FAA safety grants to make improvements identified on their annual certification inspections.
“In a lot of cases you overshoot you end up in the ocean”
That is definitely the case for a bunch of airports on the East and West Coast.
In California I am surprised they did not put in walls to protect the fish.
Lol.
Look at Midway.
Watched it. Good analysis. Shutting down the wrong engine could explain loss of hydraulics, but not being able to manually drop the landing gear because they didn’t have time ? I don’t know. With both engines out and no flaps/slats deployed they must have been losing altitude quickly..but there are two crew members in the cockpit. You don’t need both to fly the plane at the same time. Guess we will find out.
Midway has an EMAS off the end of all runways. More airports need to get them. It certainly would have helped here.
Yes, shotgun, look at Midway.
LOL
There is also something called Engineered Materials Arrestor System that should slow a plane down.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_materials_arrestor_system
The Koreans must have thought what could slow a plane down faster than…. a concrete wall .
The regulations are wrong.
Another government eff-up.
Putting up a reinforced concrete wall covered in dirt is criminal. Localizers have no need for this.
While they may have shut the wrong engine down, the problem is that they did not deploy flaps, which do not require hydraulic power to deploy.
Coming in at flaps-up speed was suicidal. They also “floated” down the runway and used up over 3000 feet of the 10,000 foot runway before touching down.
They hit a reinforced concrete wall at over 150 mph. If that barrier was not there, they would have gone through the airport block wall, but more passengers would have survived.
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