Summary
A Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 crashed at Muan International Airport, South Korea, killing 179 people, with only two crew members surviving. The black boxes stopped recording four minutes before the crash.
Authorities are investigating the cause of the malfunctioning black box. They suspect a bird strike, as feathers were found in one engine, and video footage confirmed a bird impact. However, the exact cause of the crash remains elusive.
Investigators are probing why the landing gear wasn’t deployed, the role of power failure in missing black box data, and the construction of the airfield wall the plane hit.
Everything about this incident is just so fucking odd. That a bird strike could take out both engines isn’t unheard of (see US Airways Flight 1549) but I’ve heard reports that there was a failed emergency landing attempt before the one that we saw video of, so they clearly had thrust enough to stay in the air for a go-around, and from the video we saw they carried in a ton more speed than I would expect if there had been catastrophic damage to both engines.
Except that the lack of landing gear suggests loss of hydraulic power from both engines… Except there is an emergency release that drops the gear on a 737 with just gravity, and there’s no evidence this was even attempted.
Now it looks like some electrical systems, including power to the data recorders, died right at the start of the incident, which would require not just double engine failure but failure of the APU and backup battery systems. That just seems incredibly unlikely.
Catastrophic electrical failure several minutes before the crash, though, would suggest that it wasn’t just a case of a panicked aircrew making a chain of bad decisions, which was my initial read of the situation and maybe the best fit for the rest of the circumstances.
I just can’t think of a chain of events that could reasonably lead to all the failures in evidence while still allowing the aircraft to remain airworthy for two landing attempts.
And then you get to the horrifying fact that a relatively new and modern airport had a giant concrete obstacle in what would be considered the Runway Safety Area at a US facility… Like, what the fuck? That seems like it’s designed to create this sort of a disaster.
I don’t believe the APU would be usable in flight, but they should have a RAT. Also don’t black boxes have their own batteries?
737s don’t have RATs. According to some 737 pilots I’ve seen commenting, the APU is operable in flight, but doesn’t kick in automatically and would have required ~60 seconds to start. The main electrical generators don’t automatically restart after tripping, either, so a scenario where electric power is hypothetically available, but a panicked or overloaded flight crew don’t take the steps to bring it online, is plausible.