Apparently two survivors are the crew members who were at the tail section. Even if (big if) their physical injuries are not critical, they are likely permanently psychologically scarred. I somehow doubt you can continue working in an airline after that.

Would it be reasonable to increase the length of the runway (or longer non-blocking area) based on these incidents, even if they are extremely rare.

IANAP but from what I know a plane can theoretically fly on one engine.

The article itself says the landing gear wasn't deployed.

> Yonhap reported that the landing gear of the Boeing Co. 737-800 jet malfunctioned, causing it to land on its belly without its wheels deployed. It then hit a wall at the end of the runway.

From all the speculation about birds I'm guessing the article was updated with this after many of these comments.

Doesn’t seem to be unanimous - reading through, one working hypothesis is that the pilots were incapacitated or killed by bird strike - not impossible - and someone else was attempting landing.

"Top Answer" as of right now seems to say they were trying to go around but failed and tried to get out again, but "probably" with one engine because of "bird ingestion".

That seems to be lost in translation. In my understanding of breaking news, some engine (not a landing gear) was broken due to the bird strike so the plane went around but landed without landing gears down.

it is quite improbable. they can deploy landing gears using gravity so unless the birds killed that system(they can't) it was probably pilot error. just like in pakistan in 2020 that destroyed the engines so they couldn't perform the go around and they crashed.

Yep, same thought - although I'm not an aviation expert. Some people think the pilot "forgot" to deploy the landing gear - which seems very unrealistic too.

I guess it's best to wait for an official investigation

Two possibilities come to mind. The first is that it's South Korea so airports are military assets that need to be secure. The other is that it's meant to protect the road and hotel south of the end of the runway from aircraft overshooting the end but that was intended for much lower speed collisions.

Agreed. Landing gears can be gravity-operated when hydraulics are out.

Two people survived it (or at least, they have survived it so far) by being at the tail of the plane as it separated on impact and avoided the fireball, I imagine.

The AP article[0] list the survivors as crew members(flight attendants). By looking at the main pic in the article with only the tail section as looking anything like it was once a plane, I am guessing they were saved from the brunt of it by the back galley wall

> "Emergency workers pulled out two people, both crew members, to safety, and local health officials said they remain conscious."

[0] https://apnews.com/article/south-korea-plane-fire-68da9b0bd5...

nypost article i saw said two people confirmed alive

FYI the Discord image link will expire after a few hours. If you could link the original source or reupload the image onto another image host such as Imgur, that'd be nice for people reading the thread later

Runway info: [1]. No mention of EMAS. There are chevrons at each end, but EMAS markings are not yet standardized internationally, which ops.group complains about.

At that speed, with gear up, and possibly still under power, EMAS might not help much. Unclear from the video.

Expect more solid info tomorrow.

[1] http://aim.koca.go.kr/eaipPub/Package/2015-01-07-AIRAC/html/...

All media seems to say that it is indeed made of concrete. Perhaps covered in soil?

It looks like a trolley problem to me sadly. If that wall wasn't there, the plane would have kept skidding (from the looks of that picture) downhill into traffic for who knows how long. Planes have a lot of inertia. And those look like power lines just past that wall too; those would not help the situation either.

Here’s a better streetview link. You can see the dirt berm that the aircraft hit is located far inside the perimeter wall. Also the wall is pretty dang thin and would not have stopped a 737 like that.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/NHh9eDtAGGtZY9fH7

If the video we all are seeing is from this accident, then it is not the fencing around the airport. It is some kind of mound, apparently hardened earth with antennas from the instrument landing system on it ( the fence seems to be further back ).

Seems like a matter of “fatal for the airplane passengers” vs. “fatal for the airplane passengers plus motorists”

I was curious so I went and looked at what other airports do, yyz, jfk, icn, lhr are all chainlink, some areas of yyz if you over-ran and went through he chainlink, it looks like surely you'd be on a road considerably bigger than the one at Muan.

Unfotunately the neighbourhood downstream from the runway is a field followed closely by a body of water.

I like Delhi's solution. They shoot cannons (unclear what's in them) all day to keep the birds away from the runway. This is probably super common, I just haven't seen it done elsewhere.

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