The wall is a red herring. The plane landed halfway down the runway at high speed. Something bad is going to happen if you do that at any runway on earth. In SFO you'll end up in the bay or hit the terminal depending on the orientation. In Toronto you'll crash into a highway. Stop looking at the wall and look at the minutes before the crash.
Occam's razor: the wall is most probably the cause of the unnecessary explosion that killed 179 people. The airport built ILS, or localizer, on unnecessarily over-engineered concrete structure where there shouldn't have been any obstruction. The ILS are supposed to be built on level surface or "frangile" structure so they can be easily destroyed when there is an overrun. There are reportedly at least 4 other airports with such obstructions in South Korea -- at Yeosu, it's 4 meters high (also concrete foundation)[1].
<strikethrough>There was a similar accident in Hiroshima, Japan several years ago: Airbus A320-200 skidded past the end of the runway at similar speed and struck down ILS. It eventually stopped -- damaged the airplane but no fatality.</strikethrough>
1. Localizer at Yeosu Airport, similar to Muan's, raises safety concerns, 2025.01.02 (23:58), KBS News.
> There was a similar accident in Hiroshima, Japan several years ago: Airbus A320-200 skidded past the end of the runway at similar speed and struck down ILS. It eventually stopped -- damaged the airplane but no fatality.
Are you talking about Asiana Airlines 162? It hit localizer on its way to the runway because it came in too low. It then hit the runway, skidded on the runway, and stopped about halfway (after veering off the runway at the last moment).
If the same thing happened in Muan, the plane would have hit the localizer and then touched down, stopping in the runway. The fact that the localizer's base was concrete wouldn't have mattered because that's not where the plane would hit it.
If the wheels drop off my car at 100km/h and I lose control and hit a wall, is the wall the cause of the accident?
The barrier was 250m away from the end of the runway, the extra 50m if following regulations wouldn’t have changed the outcome. And if the wall wasn’t there, the plane would dive right into a highway anyway. That’s the point.
I suppose we have to get into the engineering thought process of these Asian cultures.
Where did the idea of fortifying Localizer (LOC) come from, was there prior art specifying any degree of fortification (or lack) ? Perhaps these kind of radar (adjacent) installations are traditionally fortified, like maybe the civil air services were influenced from militry air services were things tend to be overengineered?
Perhaps saving the LOC is more important than saving a single aircraft? Some idea like this piece of infrastructure being more important that any single aircraft's safety?
The point is we might not see the reason why fortifying the LOC was obvious or straight forward to the Korean engineers.
Also, I've seen no credible evidence to support the idea the LOC is supposed to be built on a level surface, or built in a destructable way. Addressing the first point, the LOC makes sense to be slightly elevated given how they operate with near field low power radio waves. That said, these kind of slightly elevated instrument might not require an earthen mound, sourounded by concreate walls. Which goes to the second point, I can think of reasons to have these kind of LOC runways homing antenas destructable, and I can see them being robustly durrable. This thing was way past the end of the runway, and as unpo0pular as it might seems... it's a very bad thing to run out of runway. Somebody else wrote that some airports have a lack of open field beyond the end of the runway, and so it's a persuasive argument stuff could be built out there.
You are making an assumption here, that I think is unreasonable: that the pilots (who have probably landed at this airport hundreds of times, it's not like they don't know the place) were expecting a large piece of reinforced concrete to be in the path of the plane.
I'm speculating, of course, but pilots made the decision to land there (albeit in a very short amount of time). They probably made the reasonable assumption that they could "safely" (as safe as it can be, of course) overshoot the runway in that direction. They were certainly not expecting to hit a concrete structure that would pulverize their plane.
Having large concrete structures near airports is not unreasonable, hiding them absolutely is. If instead of a hidden piece of concrete it had been a terminal like in SFO, a sea wall, or another known hazardous structure, the pilots could very well have decided to land somewhere else. Including in the very large body of water next to (or beyond) the runway.
You don't know, I don't know, and we might never know depending on what is uncovered by the investigation.
Firstly, this airport has only been taking international flights since the early December.
There was also construction work going on at one end of the runway (until March), and the threshold was pushed back 300 metres, shortening the runway by that much:
The runway also is not flat (which is why the localiser beams at that end need to be raised in the first place to intercept the correct glideslope angle).
As the OP mentioned, trying this (a very fast landing, with no gear or flaps, spoilers) at many airports around the world on such a short runway (albeit one which with gear and flaps down is long enough for normal landings with the required 240 m runoff areas), is not going to work well.
You're making an assumption that the outcome would have been different if that wall wasn't there. You're wrong. 50m past that wall is another wall, 5m after that is a highway.
People should stop doing this. Transport category airplanes are designed to suffer multiple failures and still be controllable. Why the airplane landed where it did, when it did, and how fast it did are the relevant questions.
If it’s possible in any way to keep the next few km after a runway clear, then it should be clear. Ocean is great. Empty fields are great. If you are lucky enough to have empty fields but put a concrete wall there, then that’s almost malicious.
The cause of any fatality in aviation is never a single thing. It’s invariably a chain of events where removing any one thing in the chain would prevent the disaster.
Agreed. I work on a different type of vehicle with safety-critical systems for a living, and I'm naturally also very interested in the interactions between the pilots and the machine (and among themselves) and the spiral of events in the cockpit.
But that doesn't mean debating whether there's a better way to engineer typhoon-resilient localizer antenna arrays isn't also a good use of time. Safety makes it imperative to discuss all of these matters exhaustively.
Re ocean, no, that isn't so great - sea rescue is a lot more difficult to perform than on land.
> If you are lucky enough to have empty fields but put a concrete wall there ...
I am fairly sure this will be one of the findings of the investigation. I hazard a guess that every sane operator of an airport in the world is walking from the end of their runway to the airfield perimeter and taking a look anyway.
Right. Pilot boards agree on this. It's clear that the plane landed halfway down the runway at high speed, no gear, flaps, slats, or speed brakes. A runway overrun was inevitable from that point.
Nobody knows yet why they landed in that configuration. Failed go-around? Engine out landing? Cut wrong engine after a bird strike? Loss of hydraulics? Too rushed for landing checklist in an emergency? All of those are possible. More than one may have happened. Wait for the flight data recorder data.
One article says the runway was equipped with EMAS, an Engineered Materials Arresting System.[1]
This sits in the area just past the end of the runway, the part marked with painted chevrons. It's a thin layer of concrete over blocks of a material which includes foamed plastic holding pumice-like rocks. If a plane overruns the runway, the wheels break through the thin concrete layer and start pushing through the plastic/rock mixture, grinding the rocks into powder to absorb the energy.
This usually damages the landing gear, but the rest of the plane survives. 22 planes saved so far.[2][3]
It didn't help here. The plane seems to have skidded over the EMAS area on its belly, instead of breaking through and getting the braking effect. The surface of the EMAS area has to be tough enough to survive jet blast on takeoffs, so it can't just be a sand pit.
Nowhere in that article says Muan Airpot has EMAS, it says a local official confirmed that Songshan Airport in Taipei has EMAS, following local concerns that Songshan Airport has an even shorter runway (2600m vs 2800m in Muan).
A thread full of armchair experts is already bad enough, please don't make it worse with seemingly well-supported misinformation.
It does seem unlikely to me that a surface designed to give under the pressure of an aircraft wheels’ contact patch would function as designed under the comparatively lower pressure of an aircraft skidding along its belly.
It is clear that the main cause of the disaster was the landing in the middle of the runway and at excessive speed. However, if instead of that concrete wall there had been, for example, an extension of the runway filled with some material that could help dissipate the kinetic energy, perhaps the death toll would have been lower.
To continue your idiom, it's not a red herring, it's the elephant in the room.
Seriously, I think the incident it's a hard lesson for airport designer and ICAO. For better civil aviation safety, the next airport runway should have ample room for safer aircraft landing without landing gears. Previously there's no real-time aircraft tracking requirement for passenger aircraft only for cargo, but after MH370 it's mandatory now and even ICAO acknowledged this very reason for the new regulations introduction.
No amount of ample room will help if the plane touches down overshooting more than half of the runway.
Furthermore (this is pure speculation at the moment) I think chances are the crew were kind of cosplaying PIA PK-8303 - forgot about landing gears in a stress from bird strike, attempted go-around after realising it, but had not enough power from engines due to bird strike or ground hit. It's plausible final investigation report will conclude absence of localizer antennas wouldn't save them.
> Something bad is going to happen if you do that at any runway on earth.
Then the question is can we do any sort of engineering to reduce the number of fatalities that might occur when this _inevitably_ happens.
> Stop looking at the wall and look at the minutes before the crash.
The plane hit the wall and exploded. The wall seems pretty important here. I mean, yes, there are also other problems to solve, but solving them does not let you off the hook here.
> In SFO you'll end up in the bay or hit the terminal depending on the orientation.
The bay is survivable and I don't think you can hit the terminal. You could possibly hit the freeway though. That said, two of the runways at SFO are 1.5 km longer than the one in Korea.
> In Toronto you'll crash into a highway.
That runway is 1.5 kilometers longer than the one in Korea and it's another kilometer to the highway that sits uphill.
I don’t think so. Would the localizer have been made of less rigid structure and not a steel-reinforced concrete, the fatality could be much lower. Also problematic is the brick wall at the end. They could make it as fence only and not a brick wall. That will help, too.
Of course, one need to investigate the whole situation, for example why did the pilot choose to land immediately, why no flaps and spoilers were released and why no attempt has been made to manually release the landing gears (using gravity if needed) are things of intense scrutiny now.
People keep saying that, but I don't see how it's excusable for there to be a massive concrete block against which planes disintegrate at the end of any runway. Maybe everybody would've died some other way, maybe only 10 people would have survived, who knows. But we won't know because somebody put a massive concrete block in the way.
We aren't talking about any of your examples in this crash. And it isn't relevant for many other places either. If you have an open field behind a runway and you put a concrete block directly at the end of it, you can't defend your decision with "well, in this other city it doesn't matter because you'll hit the terminal". It's some weird form of whataboutism that I simply don't understand.
It's inexcusable and it's tiring seeing people defend it as if it's okay.
Apparently it is a structure that holds antennas to keep an aircraft centered on the runway. The antennas have to be there, but experts are saying that the structure supporting the antennas is way over engineered and even internal airport documents had raised concerns about it:
If you can get the same features with less risk it seems like a worthwhile thing to consider.
Meaning if we can build the same antenna array but with less risk to airplanes and all at an acceptable economical cost, it feels like something we should do. Regardless of whether or not a runway overrun at other airports and in other situations poses more or less risk.
This crash raises two separate questions: why did the airplane land the way it did, and did it make any sense to have a massive concrete barrier just off the end of the runway. The answer to either one does not render the other irrelevant. As it happens, we already know the answer to one of them.
What a lame comment. This isn't how aviation safety is managed. You expect planes to land halfway down the runway at high speed and out of control. It's an eventual certainty.
> In SFO you'll end up in the bay or hit the terminal depending on the orientation. In Toronto you'll crash into a highway.
Ending up in a bay or crashing into a highway would likely have resulted in far less loss of life.
And hitting the terminal would likely have resulted in far more loss of life. Are airport designers supposed to consider this as "an eventual certainty"?
This is a slippery slope that leads to infinitely long runways.
Any length of runway you agree on can still fail. As you just said, it's an eventual certainty.
Rather than fixating on what didn't cause the crash how about we spend that energy on finding out why this flight unlike 99.99% of flights couldn't stop in the allotted space.
If they were gonna land halfway down the runway why didn't they just do another go-around? Did the thrust reversers not work? Doesn't the 737-800 have a backup way of dropping the landing gear?
Crashing into a highway would have resulted in similar loss of life. Airplanes are only barely safe when they land without gear, and almost any obstruction is going to be more solid than a machine that's built to be as lightweight as possible.
There is no way to make a runway safe if a plane lands halfway down it, even if the brakes and landing gear are actually working. It's just not possible; runways are limited by geography and we tend to run aircraft as heavy as possible.
Terrible take, wall is not the red herring, wall is the reason of deaths of almost all souls in the plane. "Something bad is going to happen" usually has very different outcome than hitting a concrete wall.
Aviation accident history definitely disagrees with you.
Except they are and they do. The quoted "air safety expert" in the BBC article essentially says the landing was "as good as can be" and that most or all of the people onboard would have survived if the localizer berm wasn't present.
At the moment before encountering the Muan Murder Wall, there were 181 souls alive, healthy, and uninjured aboard Jeju Air Flight 2216.
At the moment after encountering the Muan Murder Wall, there were 2 souls alive, one severely injured, and 179 corpses, most mutilated beyond all recognition.
Multiple things had clearly gone wrong with the flight, and we're going to have to wait for results of investigations to determine what crew and/or ATC actions and decisions contributed. But the principle lethal mechanism was impact with the immovable object of the Muan Murder Wall, and the ensuing instantaneous deceleration, disintegration, and conflagration of the aircraft and the souls aboard.
Even with multiple contributing factors, had the Muan Murder Wall not existed at that location, the aircraft would have overrun the runway and quite possibly airport perimeter, but would have slowed far more gradually and likely encountered structures less substantial than the Muan Murder Wall.
Sampling from that we find that such accidents often result in no or few fatalities, particularly on landing. E.g.:
- Sriwijaya Air Flight 062 (2008): 130 souls, 124 passengers, 6 crew, 1 fatality, 23 injuries, 130 survivors. The aircraft struck a house, 3 of the injured were occupants. The sole fatality occurred some time after the incident. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sriwijaya_Air_Flight_062>
- China Eastern Airlines Flight 5398 (1993): 80 souls, 71 passengers, 9 crew, 2 fatalities, 10 injuries, 78 survivors. The aircraft experienced a tailstrike during a go-around attempt in heavy rain / high winds, broke in three, and came to rest in a pond. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Eastern_Airlines_Flight_...>
- American Airlines Flight 331 (2009): 154 souls, 148 passengers, 6 crew, 0 fatalities, 85 injuries, 154 survivors. Aircraft landed > 4,000 feet from the threshold with a tailwind in inclement weather. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_331>
- TAM Airlines Flight 3054 (2007): 187 occupants, 181 passengers, 6 crew, 187 fatalities, 0 survivors. The exception in my (random) sample, this aircraft had a nonfunctional thrust reverser on the right engine. Lack of grooving on runway, heavy rain, hydroplaning, asymmetric thrust, and a large warehouse directly beyond the runway perimeter all contributed to the fatalities.
I've omitted one link I'd selected, Air France Flight 007 (1962) as that incident occurred on takeoff, not landing, where fuel load and flight profile greatly alter conditions and likely outcome, and isn't directly comparable. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_007>.
If anyone cares to examine the 50 other listings on the Wikipedia category page, I suspect a similar patter of largely survivable overrun incidents prevails. The conspicuous lack of Muan Murder Walls seems significant.
From a road directly outside the airport, looking toward the ILS structure, we see that had the wall itself not been there the plane would have struck a cinderblock wall as it continued on. This would have damaged the aircraft, but less so than a solid concrete wall:
Switching directions we can look to the south along the path the aircraft would likely have followed. The terrain is flat and clear, save for further navigation light structures which would likely have given way readily to the aircraft:
Approximately 300m or so from the end of the runway are a few rather unwisely-located pensions and hotels. Those would likely contribute to ground casualties if impacted.
Another few metres past those, mudlands and bay waters, which would be more emenable to a survivable overrun.
I'm going through more of the Wikipedia category entries.
AA 1420 (1999) is notable for similarities with Jeju 2216:
The aircraft continued past the end of the runway, traveling another 800 feet (240 m; 270 yd), and striking a security fence and an ILS localizer array. The aircraft then collided with a structure built to support the approach lights for Runway 22L, which extended out into the Arkansas River. Such structures are usually frangible, designed to shear off on impact, but because the approach lights were located on the unstable river bank, they were firmly anchored. The collision with the sturdy structure crushed the airplane's nose, and destroyed the left side of the plane's fuselage, from the cockpit back to the first two rows of coach seating. The impact broke the aircraft apart into large sections, which came to a rest short of the river bank.
Captain Buschmann and 8 of the plane's 139 passengers were immediately killed in the crash; another two passengers died in the hospital in the weeks that followed.
Even though this aircraft also hit an ILS structure, fatalities were far lower than those of Jeju 2216, likely as AA 1420 had decelerated significantly both on the runway (despite severely limited wheel and air brakes) and its subsequent 240 cross-terrain slide.
You are missing the point. Runways are supposed to provide some room for errors. It's part of the investigation. You can't simply blame a human. Everything needs to be designed just in case
Most of the busiest airports in the world have some sort of dangerous obstacle roughly the same distance from many of their runways. Ravines, buildings, hills, water, trains/trams, etc, etc.
If you look at "Video of aircraft after touchdown sliding along the runway and impacting the fence:", you will find out that it took them ~1.7 sec from leaving the tarmac until they hit the construction. If you measure the distance on Google earth you come up with ~140m. That means they hit the construction with roughly 296km/h or 160 knots. If it wasn't the construction it would have been the treeline or something else. That plane was doomed, concrete construction or not.
> it took them ~1.7 sec from leaving the tarmac until they hit the construction. If you measure the distance on Google earth you come up with ~140m. That means they hit the construction with roughly 296km/h or 160 knots.
(Assuming the math is correct:) That's the average speed over that distance. The plane would have been slowing down the whole time.
Physics hack: The average velocity at constant deceleration is halfway between the initial and terminal velocities.
So if we know the landing speed (which should come out of the flight data recorder), we'll know the terminal velocity given the average speed (distance/time) which is determinable from the video.
No doubt Jeju 2216 was moving hot, but a longer run could have bled off far more speed, and kinetic energy is based on velocity squared, so every bit helps a lot.
It might not have been slowing down much in that time due to a thing called Ground Effect. Since the wheels weren't down, the flat body of the bottom of the aircraft + wings would have actually reduced drag and cushioned the plane for a bit, causing it to not slow down as much as you would assume.
In the video it looked like the plane was only running on the rear landing gears, I assume with no brakes applied, since that would've caused it to violently pitch down I assume. Only in the last bit did it pitch down and started scraping along the runway. It certainly doesn't look like it was efficiently shedding speed (but looks can be deceiving).
Maybe. But maybe another 1000m of dirt would have been enough to slow them before the treeline. The area south of the runway is mostly an easement for the ILS approach equipment, then a parking lot and finally some trees.
It's also definitely the case that the cement-reinforced dirt mound is not best practice for a locator array.
So you'd rather them have a certain 100% chance of death instead of more leeway and a chance against much less robust trees? Honestly, if I crash land, I think I prefer 150 more meters and a tree as the obstacle over the concrete block.
What is going on here and what's with this crazy ass logic?
> What is going on here and what's with this crazy ass logic?
Nothing is crazy about it. Many people in this thread (like you) are in a tizzy over a concrete wall for a plane landing with no gear at high speeds. Your argument is basically "having no wall would make me feel better" which has no logic and very obtuse.
The ground is also a hard obstacle and this plane would've hit uneven ground shortly after the runway regardless. It's going to disintegrate either way.
The obstacle obviously didn't cause the crash, but it's still probable that fewer people would have died if it wasn't there, and it seems to have been put there for no valid reason, quite recently, and against standard practice. Along with the reports that their bird control devices had not been implemented and that only 1 of the required 4 staff to repel birds were on duty. All these factors together may suggest an issue with their safety culture.
Though, I am a little sceptical of the claims that it would have hugely reduced fatalities either way. Runway excursions into unmanaged terrain at that speed don't usually work out well for the passengers, even when the terrain appears relatively flat.
I'm not an airline pilot, but I'm still curious to see what caused such an unusual crash, since there doesn't seem to be any single issue that could have caused what happened. So far, my best uninformed guess is a combination of pilot error and bad luck: the approach wasn't stabilised, so they started executing a go-around, and THEN a multiple bird strike caused catastrophic damage to the right engine. This may have led to smoke in the cabin/cockpit which they interpreted as a fire (or some other issue, vibrations etc.) that made them decide to shut down the engine, but they shut down the wrong (left) engine. So now they think they have a dual engine failure. At this stage they obviously don't have time to run through paper procedures, and they put the plane into clean configuration to maximise glide and attempt a 180 to try and land back on the runway. Then they either couldn't or forgot to deploy the gear, and floated down the runway partly due to ground effect from being at an unusually high speed, thus landing at high speed almost halfway down the runway. Thoughts?
"Normal Accidents" is a term for when things, well, normally go sideways in complex systems, and there's a whole book on it. Otherwise, it's pretty typical in disasters for there to be a laundry list of root causes and contributing factors: the Titanic was going too fast, there was hubris, and icebergs, and it was sad when the great boat went down. Could the disaster have been missed or been less bad if one or several factors had rolled up some other result? Maybe! That's what a full investigation is for, to suss out what went wrong and what things are most fixable.
I don't know why the pilots landed the way they did but the structure was there for a valid reason. It's the runway localizer antenna. It was elevated off the ground to protect it from flooding. Should it have been frangible, yes, but it's not at all out of the ordinary as far as structures near runways go, and I think the focus on it is sensationalist and misguided.
These were my thoughts exactly. Even if they lost all engines/power/hydraulics they would have had 8 mins to start up the APU so gear and flaps wouldn't have been an issue and clearly they still had some control. Did they try to go around and lose all power on the go? Gear up landings do happen in GA but I can't think of the last commercial aviation gear up landing. There will probably be a lot of useful things coming out of this. Changing design and placement of structures at the end of runways probably isn't a big one though.
Does it matter? Either it's safe to have obstacles within 300m of the end of the runway, and this was a reasonable location for the Korean airport to put their localizer in, or it's not, and the likes of Burbank should shorten their runway to ensure there's sufficient buffer space at the end of it.
My wife is South Korean (from andong). I asked her and she looked at me like I'd grown a second head "because it's South Korea? We're a young country and that is tiny airport in the south, half of Korea is a safety hazard and you know that fine well, some freaking idiot put a wall there, oh well, it's korea" and walked off pretty angry I'd even asked.
Oh I'm fully aware, I take no issue with her ire, just didn't expect that answer, tho I should have. To her point, the South of South Korea, especially in the country area, has loads of stuff like this, there are disasters waiting to happen everywhere, much of the infrastructure should be gone through with a fine tooth comb really, like this still both boggles my mind and boils my blood: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/fire-south-korean...
They used a HIGHLY flammable material to completely cover a raised highway.
(All of that said, I read from so many people now that the plane would have disintegrated once it did finally start to drag given the speed, and there is another parameter wall shortly after the berm.)
I was wondering the same thing and suspected it was some safety feature (better for a plane to smack into said wall instead of crash into some populated area, etc) I had no idea he had to make the approach in the opposite direction.
They already botched a gear down landing, which is almost never mentioned. They retracted the gear and did a teardrop go around from a headwind into a tailwind belly flop.
Stinks of bad crew resource management and ATC which is why the ATC and airline for raided by SK officials.
We don’t know why the pilot elected to double back instead of go around. There may have been indications of a progressive failure that indicated that course of action, but it does seem hasty. That haste may have caused them to not be able to set up a stabilized, minimum speed approach, and may have contributed to the long touchdown, which certainly was a contributing factor.
If there were significant winds it would have compounded those factors.
It is curious that the gear was retracted. I can only think that this was due to some kind of system failure? Perhaps that same failure explains the decision to double back instead of going around?
Lots of questions, hopefully there will be answers.
Still, the structure does not seem to meet the standard for frangibility that is indicated for objects in the approach path within 300m, although it’s not like it was at the very end of the runway.
Runway over/undershoots are actually quite common, and the building of a nonfrangible structure on an otherwise safe skid zone is a significant error in design principles that is not common or conformal to industry standards.
If those antennas had been placed on property designed towers instead of a concrete bunker, the passengers and crew very well may have walked away without a scratch, despite any errors on the part of the crew or procedures of the airline.
That's not correct. A runway can be used in either direction, if you look on Google maps you can see the runway at Jeju has markings at both ends including a number (denoting it's compass heading) - both ends are usable.
You always want to land with a headwind and never a tailwind, so ATC will use whichever end is favorable for the current conditions.
In this case, if they attempted to land with a tailwind then the on-heading vector component of wind velocity must be added to the airspeed to get the ground speed... whilst this was a contributing factor to the accident, it's not something to focus on.
There will be a thorough investigation but it will take some time to get answers.
Idk about this particular airport but it is nearly universal that runways are used from both ends. The idea is to land into the wind.
We don’t know why the pilot elected to double back instead of go around. There may have been indications of a progressive failure that indicated that course of action, but it does seem hasty. That haste may have caused them to not be able to set up a stabilized, minimum speed approach, and may have contributed to the long touchdown, which certainly was a contributing factor.
Still, a 14 ft high concrete structure within 300M of a runway end is unusual, and does not fit the standard for frangable structures which is the guidance for runway aligned equipment.
Even if the runway was only used from one direction (not true), it would be dumb to build a big concrete structure near its beginning. It's not unheard of for planes to come in too low and touch down before start of the runway due to pilot error (or even double engine failure on rare occasions).
Was the runway designed to only be used one way or was this just the it opposite direction of how it was being used at that moment? I understand that at least some airports change the direction based on wind.
> So the wall is actually at the beginning of the runway. That wall was never never meant to be at the end of a landing but at the start of landing.
Airports like this are designed to have two approach directions -- in this case, 10 and 190 degrees. Either approach direction would have been acceptable depending on the prevailing wind.
Ate Chuet made a quick analysis about the crash: https://youtu.be/xUllPqirRTI. The wall is there because that area is regularly flooded, it serves for the ILS system, and it is unfortunately over the minimum legal distance for such an object.
The runway should be as long as it’s required to be. If after (and before) the paved runway they need a length of open space, that should be however long it is required to be, too. Beyond that there could be a minefield, a pillow warehouse, an ocean, a mountain, etc. It shouldn’t matter.
Readit News
<strikethrough>There was a similar accident in Hiroshima, Japan several years ago: Airbus A320-200 skidded past the end of the runway at similar speed and struck down ILS. It eventually stopped -- damaged the airplane but no fatality.</strikethrough>
1. Localizer at Yeosu Airport, similar to Muan's, raises safety concerns, 2025.01.02 (23:58), KBS News.
Are you talking about Asiana Airlines 162? It hit localizer on its way to the runway because it came in too low. It then hit the runway, skidded on the runway, and stopped about halfway (after veering off the runway at the last moment).
If the same thing happened in Muan, the plane would have hit the localizer and then touched down, stopping in the runway. The fact that the localizer's base was concrete wouldn't have mattered because that's not where the plane would hit it.
The barrier was 250m away from the end of the runway, the extra 50m if following regulations wouldn’t have changed the outcome. And if the wall wasn’t there, the plane would dive right into a highway anyway. That’s the point.
Where did the idea of fortifying Localizer (LOC) come from, was there prior art specifying any degree of fortification (or lack) ? Perhaps these kind of radar (adjacent) installations are traditionally fortified, like maybe the civil air services were influenced from militry air services were things tend to be overengineered?
Perhaps saving the LOC is more important than saving a single aircraft? Some idea like this piece of infrastructure being more important that any single aircraft's safety?
The point is we might not see the reason why fortifying the LOC was obvious or straight forward to the Korean engineers.
Also, I've seen no credible evidence to support the idea the LOC is supposed to be built on a level surface, or built in a destructable way. Addressing the first point, the LOC makes sense to be slightly elevated given how they operate with near field low power radio waves. That said, these kind of slightly elevated instrument might not require an earthen mound, sourounded by concreate walls. Which goes to the second point, I can think of reasons to have these kind of LOC runways homing antenas destructable, and I can see them being robustly durrable. This thing was way past the end of the runway, and as unpo0pular as it might seems... it's a very bad thing to run out of runway. Somebody else wrote that some airports have a lack of open field beyond the end of the runway, and so it's a persuasive argument stuff could be built out there.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_1420>
Partially-effective runway braking and a much greater distance from runway perimeter to the nonfrangible ILS structure likely played a role.
That one touched down short of the runway at a much lower speed and configured for landing.
Nit: I think the word you want is “frangible”, easy to break.
Dead Comment
I'm speculating, of course, but pilots made the decision to land there (albeit in a very short amount of time). They probably made the reasonable assumption that they could "safely" (as safe as it can be, of course) overshoot the runway in that direction. They were certainly not expecting to hit a concrete structure that would pulverize their plane.
Having large concrete structures near airports is not unreasonable, hiding them absolutely is. If instead of a hidden piece of concrete it had been a terminal like in SFO, a sea wall, or another known hazardous structure, the pilots could very well have decided to land somewhere else. Including in the very large body of water next to (or beyond) the runway.
You don't know, I don't know, and we might never know depending on what is uncovered by the investigation.
There was also construction work going on at one end of the runway (until March), and the threshold was pushed back 300 metres, shortening the runway by that much:
http://aim.koca.go.kr/eaipPub/Package/2024-10-31-AIRAC/html/...
The runway also is not flat (which is why the localiser beams at that end need to be raised in the first place to intercept the correct glideslope angle).
As the OP mentioned, trying this (a very fast landing, with no gear or flaps, spoilers) at many airports around the world on such a short runway (albeit one which with gear and flaps down is long enough for normal landings with the required 240 m runoff areas), is not going to work well.
People should stop doing this. Transport category airplanes are designed to suffer multiple failures and still be controllable. Why the airplane landed where it did, when it did, and how fast it did are the relevant questions.
The cause of any fatality in aviation is never a single thing. It’s invariably a chain of events where removing any one thing in the chain would prevent the disaster.
But that doesn't mean debating whether there's a better way to engineer typhoon-resilient localizer antenna arrays isn't also a good use of time. Safety makes it imperative to discuss all of these matters exhaustively.
Re ocean, no, that isn't so great - sea rescue is a lot more difficult to perform than on land.
I am fairly sure this will be one of the findings of the investigation. I hazard a guess that every sane operator of an airport in the world is walking from the end of their runway to the airfield perimeter and taking a look anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_materials_arrestor_...
Nobody knows yet why they landed in that configuration. Failed go-around? Engine out landing? Cut wrong engine after a bird strike? Loss of hydraulics? Too rushed for landing checklist in an emergency? All of those are possible. More than one may have happened. Wait for the flight data recorder data.
One article says the runway was equipped with EMAS, an Engineered Materials Arresting System.[1] This sits in the area just past the end of the runway, the part marked with painted chevrons. It's a thin layer of concrete over blocks of a material which includes foamed plastic holding pumice-like rocks. If a plane overruns the runway, the wheels break through the thin concrete layer and start pushing through the plastic/rock mixture, grinding the rocks into powder to absorb the energy. This usually damages the landing gear, but the rest of the plane survives. 22 planes saved so far.[2][3]
It didn't help here. The plane seems to have skidded over the EMAS area on its belly, instead of breaking through and getting the braking effect. The surface of the EMAS area has to be tough enough to survive jet blast on takeoffs, so it can't just be a sand pit.
[1] https://focustaiwan.tw/society/202412300010
[2] https://ops.group/blog/swerving-to-avoid-why-arent-we-using-...
[3] https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/engineered-material-arresting-s...
> https://focustaiwan.tw/society/202412300010
Nowhere in that article says Muan Airpot has EMAS, it says a local official confirmed that Songshan Airport in Taipei has EMAS, following local concerns that Songshan Airport has an even shorter runway (2600m vs 2800m in Muan).
A thread full of armchair experts is already bad enough, please don't make it worse with seemingly well-supported misinformation.
Seriously, I think the incident it's a hard lesson for airport designer and ICAO. For better civil aviation safety, the next airport runway should have ample room for safer aircraft landing without landing gears. Previously there's no real-time aircraft tracking requirement for passenger aircraft only for cargo, but after MH370 it's mandatory now and even ICAO acknowledged this very reason for the new regulations introduction.
Furthermore (this is pure speculation at the moment) I think chances are the crew were kind of cosplaying PIA PK-8303 - forgot about landing gears in a stress from bird strike, attempted go-around after realising it, but had not enough power from engines due to bird strike or ground hit. It's plausible final investigation report will conclude absence of localizer antennas wouldn't save them.
It's simply not possible to build airports in useful places and guarantee three-mile runways.
This is not how safety works.
> Something bad is going to happen if you do that at any runway on earth.
Then the question is can we do any sort of engineering to reduce the number of fatalities that might occur when this _inevitably_ happens.
> Stop looking at the wall and look at the minutes before the crash.
The plane hit the wall and exploded. The wall seems pretty important here. I mean, yes, there are also other problems to solve, but solving them does not let you off the hook here.
Accidents would still happen.
The bay is survivable and I don't think you can hit the terminal. You could possibly hit the freeway though. That said, two of the runways at SFO are 1.5 km longer than the one in Korea.
> In Toronto you'll crash into a highway.
That runway is 1.5 kilometers longer than the one in Korea and it's another kilometer to the highway that sits uphill.
We aren't talking about any of your examples in this crash. And it isn't relevant for many other places either. If you have an open field behind a runway and you put a concrete block directly at the end of it, you can't defend your decision with "well, in this other city it doesn't matter because you'll hit the terminal". It's some weird form of whataboutism that I simply don't understand.
It's inexcusable and it's tiring seeing people defend it as if it's okay.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/south-korean-officials-wer...
A terminal beside the runway at roughly the same distance is not against regulations.
Almost every rule in aviation is written in blood, so if there's a rule about something, there's probably a damn good reason why.
Causality isn’t an equivalence relation with blame. A moral aspect has to be established.
Meaning if we can build the same antenna array but with less risk to airplanes and all at an acceptable economical cost, it feels like something we should do. Regardless of whether or not a runway overrun at other airports and in other situations poses more or less risk.
> In SFO you'll end up in the bay or hit the terminal depending on the orientation. In Toronto you'll crash into a highway.
Ending up in a bay or crashing into a highway would likely have resulted in far less loss of life.
Any length of runway you agree on can still fail. As you just said, it's an eventual certainty.
Rather than fixating on what didn't cause the crash how about we spend that energy on finding out why this flight unlike 99.99% of flights couldn't stop in the allotted space.
If they were gonna land halfway down the runway why didn't they just do another go-around? Did the thrust reversers not work? Doesn't the 737-800 have a backup way of dropping the landing gear?
There is no way to make a runway safe if a plane lands halfway down it, even if the brakes and landing gear are actually working. It's just not possible; runways are limited by geography and we tend to run aircraft as heavy as possible.
Aviation accident history definitely disagrees with you.
At the moment after encountering the Muan Murder Wall, there were 2 souls alive, one severely injured, and 179 corpses, most mutilated beyond all recognition.
Multiple things had clearly gone wrong with the flight, and we're going to have to wait for results of investigations to determine what crew and/or ATC actions and decisions contributed. But the principle lethal mechanism was impact with the immovable object of the Muan Murder Wall, and the ensuing instantaneous deceleration, disintegration, and conflagration of the aircraft and the souls aboard.
Even with multiple contributing factors, had the Muan Murder Wall not existed at that location, the aircraft would have overrun the runway and quite possibly airport perimeter, but would have slowed far more gradually and likely encountered structures less substantial than the Muan Murder Wall.
Wikipedia has a category page listing 55 runway overruns: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Airliner_accidents_an...>
Sampling from that we find that such accidents often result in no or few fatalities, particularly on landing. E.g.:
- Sriwijaya Air Flight 062 (2008): 130 souls, 124 passengers, 6 crew, 1 fatality, 23 injuries, 130 survivors. The aircraft struck a house, 3 of the injured were occupants. The sole fatality occurred some time after the incident. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sriwijaya_Air_Flight_062>
- China Eastern Airlines Flight 5398 (1993): 80 souls, 71 passengers, 9 crew, 2 fatalities, 10 injuries, 78 survivors. The aircraft experienced a tailstrike during a go-around attempt in heavy rain / high winds, broke in three, and came to rest in a pond. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Eastern_Airlines_Flight_...>
- Philippine Airlines Flight 137 (1998): 130 souls, 124 passengers, 6 crew, 0 fatalities, 44 injuries, 130 survivors. Ground casualties: 3 dead, 25 injured, as aircraft ploughed through a residential area. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_Airlines_Flight_137>
- American Airlines Flight 331 (2009): 154 souls, 148 passengers, 6 crew, 0 fatalities, 85 injuries, 154 survivors. Aircraft landed > 4,000 feet from the threshold with a tailwind in inclement weather. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_331>
- TAM Airlines Flight 3054 (2007): 187 occupants, 181 passengers, 6 crew, 187 fatalities, 0 survivors. The exception in my (random) sample, this aircraft had a nonfunctional thrust reverser on the right engine. Lack of grooving on runway, heavy rain, hydroplaning, asymmetric thrust, and a large warehouse directly beyond the runway perimeter all contributed to the fatalities.
I've omitted one link I'd selected, Air France Flight 007 (1962) as that incident occurred on takeoff, not landing, where fuel load and flight profile greatly alter conditions and likely outcome, and isn't directly comparable. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_007>.
If anyone cares to examine the 50 other listings on the Wikipedia category page, I suspect a similar patter of largely survivable overrun incidents prevails. The conspicuous lack of Muan Murder Walls seems significant.
Here's Google Maps view of the area south of Muan airport:
<https://www.google.com/maps/@34.9731352,126.3829389,1299m/da...>
From a road directly outside the airport, looking toward the ILS structure, we see that had the wall itself not been there the plane would have struck a cinderblock wall as it continued on. This would have damaged the aircraft, but less so than a solid concrete wall:
<https://maps.app.goo.gl/mMGqBC9PX6sEF85B9>
Switching directions we can look to the south along the path the aircraft would likely have followed. The terrain is flat and clear, save for further navigation light structures which would likely have given way readily to the aircraft:
<https://maps.app.goo.gl/Retvh9MH48ta5xPS8>
Note a hill in the distance. This could have helped slow the aircraft further, gently:
<https://maps.app.goo.gl/m1D3WrMG5QYz6cvE8> (above image zoomed in).
Vegetation is low trees and shrubs, which again could have provided a fairly gentle stopping force against the airframe:
<https://maps.app.goo.gl/aCBtY9at1Q1oCZXz6>
Approximately 300m or so from the end of the runway are a few rather unwisely-located pensions and hotels. Those would likely contribute to ground casualties if impacted.
Another few metres past those, mudlands and bay waters, which would be more emenable to a survivable overrun.
AA 1420 (1999) is notable for similarities with Jeju 2216:
The aircraft continued past the end of the runway, traveling another 800 feet (240 m; 270 yd), and striking a security fence and an ILS localizer array. The aircraft then collided with a structure built to support the approach lights for Runway 22L, which extended out into the Arkansas River. Such structures are usually frangible, designed to shear off on impact, but because the approach lights were located on the unstable river bank, they were firmly anchored. The collision with the sturdy structure crushed the airplane's nose, and destroyed the left side of the plane's fuselage, from the cockpit back to the first two rows of coach seating. The impact broke the aircraft apart into large sections, which came to a rest short of the river bank.
Captain Buschmann and 8 of the plane's 139 passengers were immediately killed in the crash; another two passengers died in the hospital in the weeks that followed.
145 souls, 139 pax, 6 crew, 11 fatalities, 110 injured, 134 survivors.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_1420>
Even though this aircraft also hit an ILS structure, fatalities were far lower than those of Jeju 2216, likely as AA 1420 had decelerated significantly both on the runway (despite severely limited wheel and air brakes) and its subsequent 240 cross-terrain slide.
Atlantic Airways Flight 670 (2006) literally fell off a cliff. 4 fatalities of 16 souls. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Airways_Flight_670>
Bangkok Airways Flight 266 (2009) literally struck a (presumably nonfrangible) control tower. 1 fatality, 71 souls. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangkok_Airways_Flight_266>
(Assuming the math is correct:) That's the average speed over that distance. The plane would have been slowing down the whole time.
So if we know the landing speed (which should come out of the flight data recorder), we'll know the terminal velocity given the average speed (distance/time) which is determinable from the video.
No doubt Jeju 2216 was moving hot, but a longer run could have bled off far more speed, and kinetic energy is based on velocity squared, so every bit helps a lot.
In the video it looked like the plane was only running on the rear landing gears, I assume with no brakes applied, since that would've caused it to violently pitch down I assume. Only in the last bit did it pitch down and started scraping along the runway. It certainly doesn't look like it was efficiently shedding speed (but looks can be deceiving).
It's also definitely the case that the cement-reinforced dirt mound is not best practice for a locator array.
What is going on here and what's with this crazy ass logic?
Nothing is crazy about it. Many people in this thread (like you) are in a tizzy over a concrete wall for a plane landing with no gear at high speeds. Your argument is basically "having no wall would make me feel better" which has no logic and very obtuse.
The ground is also a hard obstacle and this plane would've hit uneven ground shortly after the runway regardless. It's going to disintegrate either way.
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Google tells me: "Modern jets land between 120–150 kt. This depends on weight, weather conditions and several other factors."
So even after scratching asphalt for 2/3 of the runway it was still faster than the normal landing speed.
My uneducated gut feeling says pilot was trying to abort the landing.
Why did they need to land when they did?
Why did they need to land so soon after the mayday call? (only 8 minutes from mayday to crash, as I understand it)
Why couldn't they land on a longer runway?
Why did they land so far down the runway?
What forced them to land in a clean configuration?
As an airline pilot, these are some of the questions I have. The flight data and cockpit voice recorders should be able to answer these questions.
Though, I am a little sceptical of the claims that it would have hugely reduced fatalities either way. Runway excursions into unmanaged terrain at that speed don't usually work out well for the passengers, even when the terrain appears relatively flat.
I'm not an airline pilot, but I'm still curious to see what caused such an unusual crash, since there doesn't seem to be any single issue that could have caused what happened. So far, my best uninformed guess is a combination of pilot error and bad luck: the approach wasn't stabilised, so they started executing a go-around, and THEN a multiple bird strike caused catastrophic damage to the right engine. This may have led to smoke in the cabin/cockpit which they interpreted as a fire (or some other issue, vibrations etc.) that made them decide to shut down the engine, but they shut down the wrong (left) engine. So now they think they have a dual engine failure. At this stage they obviously don't have time to run through paper procedures, and they put the plane into clean configuration to maximise glide and attempt a 180 to try and land back on the runway. Then they either couldn't or forgot to deploy the gear, and floated down the runway partly due to ground effect from being at an unusually high speed, thus landing at high speed almost halfway down the runway. Thoughts?
https://multimedia.scmp.com/embeds/2024/world/skorea-crash/i...
Dead Comment
Compared to that mall collapse, a berm that far off the end of the runway won’t even be notable.
They used a HIGHLY flammable material to completely cover a raised highway.
(All of that said, I read from so many people now that the plane would have disintegrated once it did finally start to drag given the speed, and there is another parameter wall shortly after the berm.)
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Stinks of bad crew resource management and ATC which is why the ATC and airline for raided by SK officials.
If there were significant winds it would have compounded those factors.
It is curious that the gear was retracted. I can only think that this was due to some kind of system failure? Perhaps that same failure explains the decision to double back instead of going around?
Lots of questions, hopefully there will be answers.
Still, the structure does not seem to meet the standard for frangibility that is indicated for objects in the approach path within 300m, although it’s not like it was at the very end of the runway.
Runway over/undershoots are actually quite common, and the building of a nonfrangible structure on an otherwise safe skid zone is a significant error in design principles that is not common or conformal to industry standards.
If those antennas had been placed on property designed towers instead of a concrete bunker, the passengers and crew very well may have walked away without a scratch, despite any errors on the part of the crew or procedures of the airline.
Dead Comment
> no idea he had to make the approach in the opposite direction.
So the wall is actually at the beginning of the runway. That wall was never never meant to be at the end of a landing but at the start of landing.
I don't understand why this isn't made clear. Basically the runway was used against the design specifications.
You always want to land with a headwind and never a tailwind, so ATC will use whichever end is favorable for the current conditions.
In this case, if they attempted to land with a tailwind then the on-heading vector component of wind velocity must be added to the airspeed to get the ground speed... whilst this was a contributing factor to the accident, it's not something to focus on.
There will be a thorough investigation but it will take some time to get answers.
We don’t know why the pilot elected to double back instead of go around. There may have been indications of a progressive failure that indicated that course of action, but it does seem hasty. That haste may have caused them to not be able to set up a stabilized, minimum speed approach, and may have contributed to the long touchdown, which certainly was a contributing factor.
Still, a 14 ft high concrete structure within 300M of a runway end is unusual, and does not fit the standard for frangable structures which is the guidance for runway aligned equipment.
Airports like this are designed to have two approach directions -- in this case, 10 and 190 degrees. Either approach direction would have been acceptable depending on the prevailing wind.
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Maybe it's the cheapest way to engineer the ILS localizer to be flood-resistant? I don't know.
The runway should be as long as it’s required to be. If after (and before) the paved runway they need a length of open space, that should be however long it is required to be, too. Beyond that there could be a minefield, a pillow warehouse, an ocean, a mountain, etc. It shouldn’t matter.
Only infinity billions of dollars for each airport and likely cause other issues, but, progress!