Everything that happens in south korea immediately makes me think that rich assholes are somehow to blame.
Apparently it lost all power which is rare. It’s in the USA too, that black box.
I have a curiosity though:
Two minutes before the Mayday emergency call, air traffic control gave caution for “bird activity”. Declaring emergency, the pilots abandoned the landing attempt and initiated a go-around.
But instead of making a full go-about, the budget airline’s Boeing 737-800 jet took a sharp turn and approached the airport’s single runway from the opposite end, crash-landing without landing gear deployed.
So it landed from the opposite way? Is that normal? Why are they so angry about the concrete barrier, if it was on the side where planes should approach from, and not at the opposite side where they land?
I understand the barrier caused the main fire etc. yes it’s horrible. I’m sorry for all those people. I wonder what the hell happened before it crash landed. Like if they were forced to come from opposite side instead of did the full go around or if it was pilots choice.
Dima’s reply caught most of your questions.
Like if they were forced to come from opposite side instead of did the full go around or if it was pilots choice.
They may have been losing power or thrust, or had another problem that basically told them “get on the ground ASAP”. And this change in status could have happened after the go-around was initiated. Also if there is not a significant tailwind a plane can land from either direction. It was likely a number of factors that lead to this decision
Is that normal?
Yes
Why are they so angry about the concrete barrier,
Runway overruns happen from time to time. A concrete barrier in the overrun area is the equivalent of have a 90° curve on a motorway/highway with a reinforced wall beyond the curve. Bad design and destined for a fatal accident
To build on Dima’s excellent reply, the majority of runways are designed to be approached from either direction. Runway numbers are assigned based on a clockwise 360° radial, dropping the first number. An airport with a runway oriented at 10° East of North would be Runway 1. This airport will have Runways 1 and 19, but they’re be the same runway approached from the north or the south.
There’s a few things that are weird about this particular incident. Even if there was a full loss of power (indicated by the FVR losing power) the landing gear can be deployed by gravity drop. If there was a full loss of thrust from the get-go, they wouldn’t have attempted a go-around. Here’s my armchair hypothesis:
Bird strike. Loss of thrust on an engine, possible warnings to shut down the engine. Mayday mayday mayday. Attempted landing (full of fuel, likely overweight) comes in too fast or too high, or both. Go-around initiated. During climb, loss of power in second engine, but still some thrust. Announce intention to land on opposite runway. Decide to wait as long as possible to deploy landing gear in an attempt to increase glide slope. Second engine dies, total power loss. Complete task saturation means they don’t/can’t attempt a memory item dual engine failure checklist, which would include turning on the Auxiliary Power Unit or Ram Air Turbine to restore some power. (RAT should deploy automatically but perhaps it happened too fast to make a difference, also I’m guessing on the checklist, I’m not a pilot). Power loss means gear must be deployed manually. (Alternatively, with task saturation, they just forgot to deploy gear, and power loss was late and just another scoop on the shit Sunday they were served) Still coming in too high/fast, they touch down late, and overweight, and without braking action from the gear, and with no reverse thrust. They overshoot the end of the runway. For a belly landing, it was perfect. Wings level, no rolling, coming down the center line of the runway. Probably survivable for at least some. Then they hit a concrete barrier
The concrete barrier (a cinderblock wall) is at both ends of the runway. It goes all the way around the airport.
Yikes.
The RESA should absolutely have engineered arrest materials at the end of the runway. And breakaway towers for the ILS antenna
Runways can be used from either direction, usually they try to land with a headwind if there is significant wind I think. I think the localizer antenna can be at both ends of the runway if both directions have ILS approaches, but I’m not an expert. The concrete mound for the antenna is getting a lot of focus because it made a runway excursion so much worse.
It seems to me like they may have decided to make the landing then due to losing altitude and thinking they wouldn’t be able to climb again, but hopefully the investigation can figure out what probably happened.
Accidentally cutting off fuel to the wrong engine after the bird strike, or possibly both engines, would mean no additional power to climb and do a proper go around.
And no engines running means no power, which would mean no flight data recorder since this plane predated required battery backups for that system.
Yeah, I think this is likely what happened, will be interesting to see what the investigation finds. I’m surprised there isn’t any sort of backup power for the voice recorder, it’s there to help investigate incidents, those 4 minutes would have contained a lot of vital insight into what was going on.
