South Korea plane crash kills 179 with investigation into cause under way
South Korea plane crash kills 179 with investigation into cause under way
www.bbc.com
South Korea plane crash: At least 151 killed in Jeju Airlines flight
cross-posted from: https://rss.ponder.cat/post/81292
This crash is very strange to me. No flaps (even if hydraulics fail, there's electrical backup), no gear (there's gravity extension backup), landed way down the runway (9000' should have been plenty, gear up landing has been done in shorter distances)... what happened?
My guess at the moment: bird strike made the pilots panic, they didn't ensure the plane was in the correct configuration when attempting the second landing, and tried to put it down soft and ended up going long?
What do I know though, I'm not a pilot, just a fan of disasters and flight simulation. Guess I'll have to see what blancolirio has to say.
Edit: Juan Browne, aka Blancolirio on YouTube finally posted a video on this, probably some of the best insight we'll get at this early stage.
I don't know enough to say if it's a valid theory, but I saw one commenter suggest this scenario:
I’m inclined to believe hydraulics were functioning based on the stabilized approach. The recent Azeri plane crash is what it looks like when you have no hydraulics. Granted, different planes, 737 NG has manual control, but it’d be difficult. Aside from a little shimmy the approach was good, especially considering they whipped a 180 after that first landing attempt on runway 01. The plane seemed to be well in control.
Also of note, there doesn’t appear to be any rudder applied on the approach, so one engine out seems to not be the case. They also tracked straight down the centerline so no asymmetric thrust. This would imply they either had both engines or no engines. I’m hesitant to believe both engines were out due to the speed they had after scraping down the runway, with the nose in the air.
I’m wondering if they got task saturated after the bird strike and quick go around 180, didn’t hear the “too low, gear” warning, then got spooked from the scrape and attempted a go around like that PIA crash. The initial tail strike happened way earlier on the runway, they floated for a long time after that initial contact.
Altogether very strange. Definitely a lot of Swiss cheese holes aligning in a terrible way. Very curious to see what’s recovered from the FDR and CVR.
Way too fast as well it looks like. Maybe both engines failed and it was the last possibility to get it down. RIP. Last moments must have been awful, especially for the pilots who saw that wall coming ..
I don’t think whatever electrical backup has enough power to deploy flaps at landing or near landing speeds.
737 NG alt flaps work up to 230 knots, well above landing speed. Landing with hydraulics out is the primary function of the alt flaps system. It's really slow, however, so flaps 15 is typically the most they use.
That's unfortunate if true
Not a 737 Max, but again, another Boeing plane whereas I haven’t seen a fatal airbus accident in ages. It may not have been the plane at all and may have completely been pilot error, but still doesn’t look great to see another fatal 737 accident
I'm wondering if they were even able to setup properly for the second landing. Assume competent pilots and the wheels, flaps, and reversers cannot deploy. Was the second engine even actually working? The video we have is them already on the ground. So it makes me wonder if we're looking at the alternate scenario of having landed in the Hudson.