Cause of South Korea plane crash unclear as officials focus on bird strikes

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www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/29/cause-of-…

No one knows for certain what caused Jeju Air flight 2216 to crash, killing all but two of its 181 passengers and crew. As darkness fell at Muan international airport in South Korea and officials fielded questions from distraught relatives of the dead, the most likely explanation was that the plane had been struck by one or more birds, triggering a sequence of events that prevented the pilot from deploying the landing gear.

Aviation officials focused on bird strikes – and, to a lesser extent, the weather – as the most probable cause, even as some experts said the relatively common phenomenon would not have been enough to cause a catastrophic failure of the landing gear.

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I'm having trouble seeing the connection between birds hitting the engine and the lagging gear not being deployed. Can anybody explain that?

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It doesn't matter what caused the plane to crash. The deaths are the fault if the airport and its concrete ILS antennas


Even with a landing gear failure nothing else made sense: landing 2/3rds way up runway, no flaps, excess speed etc

Complete loss of power due to strikes on all engines. The ram air turbine is not enough to move all those parts.

Boeing 737 allows for gravity drop of landing gear which would work even with total power loss

https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/79782/can-the-landing-gear-be-lowered-when-system-a-hydraulic-pressure-is-lost-in-boei

Ram air turbine is sufficient for control surfaces, which is what it's designed for

Having one thrust reverser deployed on the side of the bird strike was super weird. Both thrust reversers can be controlled by the APU hydraulic system

The APU doesn’t have a hydraulic system. There are three redundant electric pumps however, and these can run off the battery. Regardless, I don’t believe there was any issue with the hydraulics as the plane was well controlled on the final approach.

It just gets weirder doesn't it


I see what you mean. It's not directly connected I see. Only indirectly via electrical pump as you pointed out.

It is curious that no flaps or spoilers were deployed. Maybe the control was not as great as it appeared. The plane did touch down a long way down the runway.





There’s no ram air turbine on a 737.




It should be obvious that we don't know exactly why a plane crashed barely a day ago.

Investigating takes time and since the pilots are dead they'll have to reconstruct the situation from the wreakage, flight data recorders and whatever other information they can piece together.

Expect a few weeks before getting a rough theory and a year or two for a final report after it's done bouncing between all the various authorities who will want to be involved and the manufacturers.


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