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Experts have explained how two cabin crew members survived the tragic Jeju Air crash that occurred on Sunday.
Overview of the Tragic Crash
The flight, which skidded off the runway in Muan, 180 miles south of Seoul, hit a concrete barrier and erupted into flames after its landing gear reportedly failed to deploy.
The Boeing 737-800, carrying 181 people, was involved in one of South Korea’s deadliest aviation disasters, with only two survivors. Both of them were flight attendants seated at the back of the plane, an area that remained partially intact after the crash, enabling them to survive.
Survival of the Cabin Crew
Muan fire chief Lee Jung-hyun, who oversaw efforts to extinguish the blaze, remarked that the tail section was the only part of the plane recognizable after the inferno. “Only the tail part retains a little bit of shape, and the rest of [the plane] looks almost impossible to recognize,” he said.
According to Lee Jeong-hyeon, an official in charge of search and rescue at Muan International Airport, the crash was so severe that only the tail remained recognizable. “We could not recognize the rest of the fuselage,” he told The New York Times.
Typically, cabin crew are seated at the very front or rear of the plane. On a Boeing 737-800, the flight attendants are seated in fold-down seats near the rear doors, which were used to extract the two survivors.
The tail section of the aircraft largely remained intact after the catastrophic crash, with the rear exits visible in the image above. It is likely that the cabin crew were seated near these exits, behind the toilets.
The Survivors’ Testimonies
A 33-year-old male flight attendant, identified as Lee Mo, was rescued at 9:23am and later said he had been wearing his seatbelt during the crash but had no memory of the incident after that. When he woke up at Ewha Women’s University Hospital in Seoul, he reportedly asked, “What happened?” and “Why am I here?”
The second survivor, a 25-year-old female flight attendant, known by her last name, Koo, is currently recovering at Asan Medical Center in eastern Seoul. She recalled the explosion after smoke emerged from one of the plane’s engines, saying, “Smoke came out of one of the plane’s engines and then it exploded.”
Worst South Korean Airline Disaster in Decades
Sunday’s crash marked the worst disaster for a South Korean airline in decades, with 179 fatalities. Investigations into the causes of the crash are ongoing, with authorities having identified 141 of the victims so far. The bodies have been moved to a temporary morgue.
According to South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport, the bodies of all 179 victims have been moved to the morgue, while families of the victims await information.
Family Reactions and Grief
The crash’s horrific toll has left many grieving families in shock. Jeon Je-young, whose daughter Mi-sook was among the 179 who perished, said he still couldn’t believe the tragedy. “When I saw the accident video, the plane seemed out of control. The pilots probably had no choice but to do it,” the 71-year-old father stated.
Possible Causes of the Crash
A video of the plane’s approach suggests it hit a bird before circling the runway and attempting a landing with its flaps up, possibly due to hydraulic failure that also prevented the landing gear from deploying.
Air safety expert David Learmount described the collision with the concrete wall at the end of the runway as the “defining moment” of the disaster, calling the wall’s presence “verging on criminal.” He suggested that had the wall not been there, the plane could have potentially slid over a fence, onto a road, and into a nearby field, where everyone might have survived.
“We think everybody would have been alive… the pilots might have suffered some damage, but I even suspect they might have survived,” Learmount added.
Hydraulic Failure and Bird Strike
A bird strike on the aircraft is believed to have caused power loss to at least one engine, and possibly led to the hydraulic failure. After a failed initial landing attempt, the pilots touched down at high speed on their second attempt, without deploying flaps or speed brakes to slow the plane down. Only one engine’s thrust reverser was used to slow the aircraft.
Captain Denys Davydov, a pilot of the same Boeing 737-800, told The Times that the presence of hydraulics on the plane to deploy the reverser but not the flaps or landing gear was highly unusual.
Airline safety expert Geoffrey Dell also doubted that a bird strike alone would have disabled the landing gear, stressing that such strikes typically don’t lead to the loss of the airplane. Furthermore, questions have been raised as to why firefighters weren’t on the scene when the plane was landing.
Questions About Airport Safety
The plane touched down too far along the runway, which led to a tragic and fatal collision with the concrete wall.
Joo Jong-wan, however, defended the airport’s design, claiming that both ends of the runway have green buffer zones before reaching the wall, and insisted that the airport adhered to aviation safety standards, despite the wall’s proximity appearing deceptive.
