Out With a Bang
Note: Thoughts and opinions herein are based on the best available information at the time of posting. Updates may follow.
December 30, 2024
NOT A GOOD ending to the year. Two serious accidents in less than a week.
First came the shooting down of Azerbaijan Airlines flight 8243 on Christmas day, killing 38 people. Five days later, Jeju Air flight 2216 crashed in a fireball at Muan International Airport in Korea, killing all but two of the 181 passengers and crew on board.
The Azerbaijan incident appears pretty straightforward. The Brazilian-built Embraer E190 crashed after being hit by an anti-aircraft missile — the latest in a surprisingly long list of commercial jets downed by military fire. It could have been worse: twenty-nine people managed to survive, owing to the fact that, unlike the tragedy of MH17, for example, the plane did not break up in midair, instead hitting the ground in a semi-controlled state.
The Jeju Air disaster is, for now, more mysterious.
Some witnesses describe a flock of birds being ingested by the 737’s right engine, with flames coming from the engine thereafter. This is unconfirmed, and in any case does not explain what happened next: the plane touching down with its landing gear retracted, skidding off the runway into a berm and exploding in a fireball.
A gear-up landing, by itself, should be perfectly survivable. Never is a landing gear problem — any landing gear problem — a dire emergency. Just as a bird strike doesn’t explain the gear being up, the gear being up doesn’t explain the crash.
Which brings us to the flaps. Watching the accident footage, it appears to me (and others corroborate this) that the 737 landed without its wing flaps or leading edge slats extended. This is important because he 737 has unusually high approach and landing speeds to begin with. (In normal operations, flaps and slats are deployed incrementally during approach, allowing the plane to maintain lift while slowing to a safe landing speed.) These speeds would be even higher — much higher — if attempting to land without flaps or slats.
Under those circumstances you’d want the longest runway possible. The runway at Muan is 9200 feet long, but was shortened by a thousand feet due to construction. That left the pilots with 8200 feet. That’s not short, but it’s not long, either. How much runway would a 737-800 require if touching down with no flaps or slats, and no landing gear? I don’t know.
Which takes us to the issue of why the crew didn’t spend more time troubleshooting and better preparing for an emergency landing — preparations that might have included diverting to an airport with a longer runway. It appears the landing was quite rushed.
Landing inadvertently without gear and flaps is all but impossible. It was obviously done intentionally, and hurriedly. What we don’t know is why.
About two years ago, a flight I was piloting had a somewhat serious flap malfunction going into Bogota, Colombia. We spent a good half-hour in a holding pattern, going through checklists, coordinating with our company and with ATC, reviewing runway distance data, and so on. We landed without incident. It appears the Jeju pilots did nothing of the sort, short of issuing a brief distress call. They broke off one approach, circled around, and about five minutes later made the second, fatal landing.
It’s hard to imagine a professional airline crew needlessly hurrying and choosing a too-short runway. Something, I would think, was driving their urgency. A malfunction involving both the landing gear and flaps hints at a serious hydraulics problem. It also — especially combined with the rush factor — hints at the possibility that both of the plane’s engines had failed or were shut down. Did a bird damage one engine, and the crew then accidentally shut down the other one, leaving them with no power at all? Wrong-engine shutdowns have happened before (Google “British Midland crash”).
Others have speculated that complications from the bird strike may have caused the cabin to begin filling with smoke. Did the pilots then panic? Ultimately, we could be looking at a human factors failure as much as any mechanical one. In years past, Korean aviation was heavily scrutinized for its cockpit authority culture and a lack of what today is known as “crew resource management.” It’s worth noting that both pilots were, at least by U.S. standards, fairly inexperienced. The captain had about 6,000 flight hours, and the first officer fewer than a third as many. As a point of comparison, I have about 20,000 hours and currently fly as a first officer.
We’d also like to know the reason for that barrier wall and concrete antenna support at the end of the runway, rather than the type of clearway found at most airports.
One thing for sure is that putting the plane down in the ocean, as was suggested by a supposed aviation expert in a Wall Street Journal online article yesterday, would not have been wise. Any landing, including one without flaps or landing gear, would be far more dangerous on water than on pavement, provided the right precautions are taken. I emailed the reporters at the Journal, recommending they remove those lines, but got no reply.
Jeju Air is a Korean low-cost carrier named after the popular holiday island off the country’s south coast. The Seoul-Jeju route is one of the busiest air routes in the world.
The Azerbaijan Airlines flight, meanwhile, is at least the third commercial jet to have been shot down by Russian or Russia-backed military forces. In 2014, 298 people died when Malaysia Airlines flight 17 was hit by a Buk missile over Ukraine. And in 1983, 267 people died when Korean Air Lines flight 007 was downed near Sakhalin Island by a Soviet fighter after drifting off course. MH17 and KAL 007 stand as the 7th and 11th deadliest crashes of all time.
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30 Responses to “Out With a Bang”
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But on top of the berm, there was a substantial concrete structure supporting the ILS equipment…
@ Gimlet Winglet (again)
The WSJ piece included video from Geoffry Thomas —
https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasgeoffrey/?originalSubdomain=au
Several steps above, “dogshit.”
Rod wrote, “the recorders will clear it all up”, BBC reporting it’s not possible “to locally decode the flight data recorder, which was damaged in the crash and is missing a crucial connector” (whatever a connector is). Seems to me there are often problems with the recorders: damage, power outage prior to crash, etc.
Isn’t this degree of unreliability a little surprising?
1. The “connector” is an electrical plug used to connect the data electronics of the flight data recorder to whatever device the investigators are using to analyze the crash.
2. Flight Data Recorders are designed to retain their data should the earth come to an end (I’m exaggerating) before it can be downloaded from the FDR. If the connector is missing, it can be replaced or the FDR can be opened to remove whatever media is used to store flight data. In the old days that was magnetic tape — today it’s solid-state memory like is in your iPhone but in a shell far more rugged than your iPhone. Data can be read directly from memory chips if necessary.
@ Gimlet Winglet
Responding to your criticism of WSJ … “WSJ is dogshit in these types of things, cite something else.”
Airport Design Under Scrutiny In JeJu Air Accident Probe
Experts question placement and structure of localizer antenna.
Experts have explained that, given the necessity of a localizer antenna being located on the runway centerline, great effort has been expended worldwide to make the antennas’ structures as light and “breakaway” as possible. Not so here. And while the Muan International Airport’s footprint doesn’t leave much room for an overrun, experienced airline pilots have cringed at how close the antenna was to the end of the runway. And if there were ever a case where some runway length could be sacrificed to install an Engineered Materials Arresting System (EMAS), Muan International would be a prime candidate.
https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/among-many-unanswered-questions-the-fatal-role-of-the-antenna-structure-is-relatively-clear/
Any more misdirected complaints?
Re “the recorders will clear it all up”, BBC reporting it’s not possible “to locally decode the flight data recorder, which was damaged in the crash and is missing a crucial connector” (whatever a connector is). Seems to me there are often problems with the recorders: damage, power outage prior to crash, etc.
Isn’t this degree of unreliability a little surprising?
Many stories have suggested the Russians refused to let the Azerbaijan plane land in Chechnya (or nearby). Sending it over the Caspian could have been forced to get the plane to crash and the debris (and black boxes) sink to the bottom. I don’t know how easy retrieval would be there since there’s no ocean access. The “phugoid” trip across the Caspian would have been terrifying.
On a related note, Putin helped destroy Chechnya a quarter century ago, wrecking pretty much every building in the city, killing an estimated 100,000 people. “Blowing Up Russia” discusses this in detail.
@Speed
You exit the end of the runway carrying 100+ knots you’re going to have a bad day, regardless of whatever happens to be there in your straight line path. WSJ is dogshit in these types of things, cite something else.
There was no “concrete wall.” It was an earthworks berm on which was mounted the localized array. Why they chose that option instead of flush-mounting with frangible mounts is yet another mystery.
Thanks. I have amended that sentence.
Today’s WSJ has more …
South Korea Jet Crash Sparks Debate Over Barrier’s Proximity to Runway
U.S. and international aviation regulators developed standards years ago for structures near runways to guard planes from hitting equipment at airports
https://www.wsj.com/business/airlines/south-korea-jet-crash-sparks-debate-over-barriers-proximity-to-runway-ed4212c3?st=BRvozR&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
The recorders will clear it all up. Some spec is that #2 pack filled pax cabin with smoke creating a new priority. Doesn’t it all come down to that one thing “don’t rush”? Then “Cognitive narrowing”. Definitely had crew experience with a colleague on that point. Ugh. Very sad – that Captain stayed in control all the way. Every awful berm like that should come down immediately.
May be time to once again hire American pilots.
While I understand the South Korea crash has captured the aviation attention, I wish you would give the flight crew of the Azerbaijani aircraft the praise and respect they deserve for limping their wounded aircraft across the Caspian Sea, while their navigation was being jammed. Captain Igor Kshnyakin was the pilot in command, while his copilot was First Officer Aleksandr Kalyaninov, and together they gave their passengers a chance at survival.
Crew initially attempted to land using Runway 1 in Muan. One ground observer reportedly stated that the Jeju Air 737 flew through a flock of birds during this first approach. A number of popping sounds came from the aircraft’s engines after it hit the birds. Its landing gear was extended at this time.
The flight crew went around and declared a MAYDAY soon afterwards. At this time, it is not clear how much damage the Jeju Air 737 suffered after hitting those birds. However, its pilots soon decided to immediately return to land on runway 19, i.e. the other end of the runway.
An uncontained failure in one of its engines might have caused extensive damage to the landing gear, flight controls, and engine controls.
Both engines could be locked in full thrust from the go around, landing gear is retracted, flaps stowed and the aircraft gains speed and altitude but then it appears that the pilots were unable to deploy the landing configuration due to uncontrolled thrust as the flaps, slats because gear would be ripped off above a certain speed.
What is clear is the pilot chose to put the plane on the ground as quickly as possible, which is ideal when losing hydraulic fluid and subsequent control of the aircraft. One major contributing factor is the concrete wall that should never have been there! I have no doubt that if a collapsible antennae was installed as it should be, more people would be likely alive today.
-Nalliah Thayabharan
@Lee Taplinger
It is not odd at all, and is a known thing to happen (usually in the simulator). Brain farts are a thing, and they happen more often under stress and/or high workload. Yes, I expect PIC to get it right and shut down the damaged engine, not the good one. But realist me knows that errors happen and that this is a well-identified and known error pattern. What can be done is for pilot not flying to double-check that the correct engine has been shut down. This may be a problem if there is too steep a power gradient between the pilots and/or the country has a strong culture of not embarassing one’s superior. The power gradient and cultural barrier to speaking up is something that can be somewhat ameliorated with training.
That said, at this time we do not know that the wrong engine was shut down, just that we’re presented with a baffling set of circumstances that led to a deadly runway excursion, and that wrong engine shutdown is one plausible explanation for the sequence of events that led to it. One hopes the cockpit data recorder info will become public soon.
It’s been a long time since I got my 737 type rating but I do remember that the landing gear could be lowered by “free-fall” even if all the hydraulics were inoperative. That Jeju accident is as mysterious as it is tragic.
Apropos of nothing, but Azerbaijan? I had a job there flying a Metroliner thirty years ago in support of pipeline construction. Azerbaijan Airlines call sign is “Azal” which always sounded like “asshole” when the controllers called them.
And in related news, the US Navy shot down one of its own F-18s last week while another took evasive action and barely escaped. Accidental shoot downs are a function of the level of tension, which in many regions is at an all time high.
There are a lot of conflict zones out there, and a lot of weaponry. I’m surprised this sort of thing doesn’t happen more often.
(“something went wrong” as they say — posted 10 min ago but nothing appeared, will try again)
As others have pointed out, Russia has shot down four airliners. In 1978 a Korean 707 went Way WAY off course & was shot down over the USSR (107 of the 109 people on board survived). So it was mighty suspicious when yet another Korean airliner appeared, Way off course, in the highly sensitive Sakhalin Island military zone five years later.
Assuming that the Russians also shot down the Azerbaijani & Malaysian aircraft, that totals four. But don’t forget that the US has shot down at least one (IranAir 655), two if you count Itavia 870, which was surely downed either by the Americans or the French (both of whom had aircraft carriers in the area at the time).
The moral of the story is: err on the side of caution with war zones, actual or potential.
@Ian It is odd. You have two engines, engine “1” and engine “2”. Engine “1” is on the left and engine “2” is on the right. It’s not complicated. I’m sure they’re labelled in the cockpit. Putting aside the workload and stress level, if I’m on a flight, I would expect the crew to get it right the first time.
Thank you, Patrick. I always await your posts after airline incidents.
Thank You. Wasn’t there a Boeing 707, I believe an American flag commercial aircraft forced down in the 60’s and one passenger killed, by the Russian military?
Very sad and concerned for personal reasons as I live on Jeju, fly Jeju Air half the time, and make a point of catching up with the posts on this website as I wait to board.
Patrick wrote, “We’d also like to know the reason for a concrete wall at the end of the runway, rather than the type of clearway found at most airports.”
I read somewhere today that the land slopes downward past the end of the runway requiring that the antennas (antennae?) must be elevated above the surface. Google Maps has a fairly good image of the area …
https://maps.app.goo.gl/DrMWzP31Hv3vyF1G7
But that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t or couldn’t have been raised using some sort of frangible framework.
Wasn’t there an earlier KAL shot down over northern Russia. I believe that the pilots were using celestial navigation because of their proximity to the north pole. Plane landed on a frozen surface and most people survived. Maybe nobody was killed by the exploding shrapnel?
The speculation I’ve seen (and it is all speculation at this point until the investigation is done) is that the pilots misidentified which engine was taken out by the bird strike and accidentally shut down the wrong one, leaving them with no thrust and no time to use alternate methods to actuate the gear and flaps.
A few decades ago when there was a spate of commercial airline crashes involving Asian carriers, there was a lot of discussion about the top down hierarchy in the cockpit and how no one dared question the higher ranking guy as that would be insubordinate and not “giving face” to the senior.
I sure hope those days have not returned and more will be eventually uncovered in this very intriguing tragedy.
Whenever I hear of an aviation incident I come straight here to read your sensible, thoughtful analysis. Thank you for not writing sensationalist, click-bait style post and just sticking to the facts.
Patrick, thank you for the rational no-hype thoughts.
And while we’re talking about commercial jets shot down by foreign powers, the U.S. Navy shot down an Iranian commercial jet in 1988.
Question marks indeed. Do you think there’s any hope of any of them being answered?