Jeju Air, South Korea

All the headlines are "airplane veers off runway" and nothing about gear up landing
 
Weird. From what I can see, it was a stabilized appr, sans the gear being down. Right engine looks like it has the reverser engaged, and left I can't see but I don't think the reverser was engaged there. Way, way down the runway on touchdown. I don't think I see flaps or slats out either. This one is going to be complicated I suspect. the short vid in flight seems like the right engine ingested something as well. RIP to all those who passed. It's amazing they said someone survived.
 
Obviously a lot of fuel still aboard.
Why wasn't it dumped, or burned off?

23 confirmed dead (will certainly increase) out of 175 + 6 crew reported.
 
FlightmechH3 said:
They burned up 7k ft of runway before it touched down. Why?
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Barrett50 said:
Weird. From what I can see, it was a stabilized appr, sans the gear being down. Right engine looks like it has the reverser engaged, and left I can't see but I don't think the reverser was engaged there. Way, way down the runway on touchdown. I don't think I see flaps or slats out either. This one is going to be complicated I suspect. the short vid in flight seems like the right engine ingested something as well. RIP to all those who passed. It's amazing they said someone survived.
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With zero research, I'd guess they flew a normal profile with no gear, and i agree it didn't look like any flaps.

Why would an airline pilot not account for the plane being much slicker and faster? With only a little research:

epicflightacademy.com

Hiring Requirements Jeju Air

Interested in a pilot career with Jeju Air? Explore our detailed guide on hiring requirements to boost your chances and pay.
epicflightacademy.com epicflightacademy.com

What are the hiring requirements for Jeju Air careers?​

General Requirements:

  • Valid CPL, IFR, MEL License with Boeing 737-800 type rating
  • ICAO English level 4 or above
  • Hold a current and valid Class I Medical Certificate
  • Wireless Communication License
  • 300 hours PIC
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I'm not going to defend the 1500 hour rule or the atp-ctp class, but it does seem that the fairly rigorous US ATP requirements provide some elevated level of safety.

Absolutely horrific.
 
I’ve NEVER seen a transport category jet training program that trained such a thing as gear up landing.

In a crisis that puts you in startle response mode, you tend to just do what you’ve done most.

Training makes the startle response the appropriate thing to do, experience keeps you out of the startle response arena.

Edit (for @JOhnH): and besides, it was a Boeing, so…
 
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Ok, so here’s my theory. They fly the approach on auto-throttles because “that’s the way we were taught” and in that configuration, the auto throttles don’t retard, but actually add power as they touch down.
 
Dave Theisen said:
Ok, so here’s my theory. They fly the approach on auto-throttles because “that’s the way we were taught” and in that configuration, the auto throttles don’t retard, but actually add power as they touch down.
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I hope that's not the case. Lots of unexplained things here. Did 2 damaged engines prevent a go-around when they were obviously gonna land long? Why no gear, flaps, or spoilers? Lots to unpack. It is hard to understand the sequence of events that led to a George of the Jungle ending into a berm at 140 knots.
 
Dave Theisen said:
Ok, so here’s my theory. They fly the approach on auto-throttles because “that’s the way we were taught” and in that configuration, the auto throttles don’t retard, but actually add power as they touch down.
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Yeah, it didn’t appear to be slowing at all.
 
Wow… never even considered the fact no weight on wheels, no auto spoilers (@SebIp), just lots of things if you’re just a systems manager rather than appropriately experienced.

Frankly, the whole AQP shift took a lot of this knowledge away from pilots here in the US. Hasn’t really manifested itself yet… yet… so it’s considered successful.
 
Pakistan 2.0 Hit birds engine bangs rattle flight crew. They forget the gear and hearing metal scrape do go around. WAG
 
Be an interesting one for Juan. Aircraft just seems like it’s not slowing. Engines looking like they are powered up. Nose is high and not coming down. Elevator looks neutral or up. Does look like right engine is possibly in reverse? Weird.
 
"ADS-B data received from the airplane ceased at 900 feet at 08:58L (23:58Z Dec 28th) while on approach to runway 01 - previous flights were received until the transponder was switched off at the apron. The videos show the aircraft was skidding on runway 19 before impacting the concrete fence."

There is a lot of WTH going on here. 5 minutes after the bird strikes the crash happens? I would assume a crew would orbit to manage things and prepare people for a landing. Also, people reported the gear was down during the bird strikes. None of this makes sense.
 
Ooooph… another possibility?

THE MOST DANGEROUS thing in aviation (possibly anywhere); indecision.

Portion of my emergency brief: if we start (you name the procedure), we’re gonna finish (you name the procedure)…
 
Jim K said:
I'm not going to defend the 1500 hour rule or the atp-ctp class, but it does seem that the fairly rigorous US ATP requirements provide some elevated level of safety.
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Seems premature to refer to the 1500-hour rule, when we don't know the actual experience level of the pilots involved. They may both have had more than 1500 hours.

Ron Wanttaja
 
I don’t believe faa regs are causal in our safety record. I believe we have a good record DESPITE them. Generally our overall culture is causal, which is a changin…. Who knows if tech is gonna be able to overcome that?

Notice I used the words “appropriately experienced” rather than rely on an arbitrary metric.
 
www.bloomberg.com

South Korea Air Crash That Killed 179 Poses Bird-Strike Mystery

Investigators probing the cause of the worst civil aviation accident ever in South Korea will focus on a bird strike and the unusual landing-gear failure in the final moments of the fateful flight that left all but two of the 181 occupants of the Boeing Co. 737 jet dead.
www.bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com
According to this article they already did one go-around and switched runway direction
I feel like we'll need the CVR/FDR for this one to even speculate. Very strange accident and little to go on at this point.
 
Sierra_Hotel said:
Wow, I was wondering why it was still carrying so much speed so far down the runway.
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Yes middle of runway with no landing configuration to reduce speed. Plus in the video they bounced a few times, so it should have been obvious to pilots that gear wasn’t down. A 737 should be able to climb on one engine, if it is still working. Regardless, that wall is some form of negligence.
 
I guess we do need to see the experience level of those pilots, crap happens, but way too much automation in these things that makes it difficult to fly when an issue does occur? I was also thinking that culturally, many pilots here have their own airplane and keep more involved with aviation on their time off. Whereas over there, GA isn’t as big of a thing, they get very dependent on automation. I have no idea tho, I’m also quite inexperienced. I don’t think this landing should have resulted as it did.
 
Over on BT, Capt has 9800 hours.

Someone analyzed the video and thinks touchdown was about 4200 feet down a 9100 foot runway at about 190 knots. Still doing 150 when ran off the end of the runway.
 
From Rueters:

The captain of the Boeing 737-800 plane had worked at that rank since 2019 and logged 6,823 flight hours, the South Korean government said. The first officer had worked at that rank since 2023 and had logged approximately 1,650 flight hours.

Lots of stuff doesn't add up with this one.
 
Well, I might as well speculate some more. As noted prev, it's a stabilized approach, sans the gear, flaps, slats. So, 190Kts might be the right number over the fence. I'm sure there is no book speed for gear up in the QRH or otherwise. So, the runway is made, aileron and elev control are intact as he's feathering the elev to make the smoothest touchdown and not slam it. Ok, I can grok that as well. But, once the runway is made, and the gear is up it's time to shed energy. Engs off, stick fwd, and touchdown in the first third of the runway. At 9000ft he's still going plenty fast, like well over 100kts.

They should have the black(orange) boxes, and it'll be interesting to see the pos of the throttles at the end of this, and if one of the reversers was engaged, or, if it was engaged but the engine was shelled already.

I'm going with 'weird' again. How two people lived through that is one of those miracles.
 
Here are some comments from someone at another site I visit that says they fly the exact plane.

===============

I fly the 737-800, same model as in this crash.

Our checklists do have both pilots verifying the gear being down before landing. In addition to that, there's a gear warning system similar to what you'd see on light GA aircraft, but a lot less ambiguous. An angry voice will start yelling at you "TOO LOW, GEAR." This does not stop until you either extend the gear, or flip a guarded switch to silence that alert. (something you'd only do if there was a problem with gear position sensing to silence a nuisance alert, or if you were intending to land on the belly, and even then only when directed by a checklist!)

I'd like to say it would be impossible to do by mistake, but as others have mentioned, task saturation can affect people a lot.

I've seen a lot of wild speculation around, some people thought of gear malfunctions as an explanation for it not being down. I'm not convinced. It's hard to imagine a bird strike scenario that prevents gear extension. Normal gear extension has two hydraulic pumps, one engine-driven and one electrically-powered. Even if you lose the engine attached to that pump, the electric pump should be able to put the gear down just fine. I don't see how birds could rupture the hydraulic lines, they're not in a position to be struck from the front, but even if the hydraulics were cut somehow we can pull manual release cables and let gravity to do the work.

On the flipside, the flaps also don't seem to be deployed? It's hard to tell from the crappy video, but that could lend to the idea of hydraulic problems. The video starts pretty late in the process, but it looks like the aircraft probably was coming in much too high and fast, based on how fast it seemed to be moving so close to the end of the runway.
 
wanttaja said:
Seems premature to refer to the 1500-hour rule, when we don't know the actual experience level of the pilots involved. They may both have had more than 1500 hours.

Ron Wanttaja
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I've read that the Captain had just under 6,900 hours but the FO had around 1,650. Captain has been with the airline since 2019 while the FO has been with them for 10-11 months. Math doesn't quite work for the FO.
 
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