Summary
South Korea will remove a concrete barrier at Muan International Airport following the December 29 Jeju Air crash, which killed 179 people.
The plane overshot the runway and collided with the barrier, causing an explosion.
Authorities will replace the structure with breakable materials and expand safety zones at seven airports.
A bird strike is also being investigated as a potential cause, with feathers found in the plane’s engines.
Yeah. The crash should’ve been survivable. If, as many have theorized, the pilots lost both engines (or believed they had), gliding to the runway with no gear or flaps makes sense. Both would introduce drag and could prevent reaching the runway. Unfortunately, they landed long and fast, preventing them from slowing sufficiently. Even so, at most airports this shouldn’t have been nearly so bad. It would’ve been bad, but not “explosion and loss of nearly everyone on board” bad.
The direct cause of the fatalities in this incident is that damn berm, something that would never be allowed at a modern airfield in the United States and shouldn’t be allowed anywhere. If you need additional height on the localizer, you use a tear-away structure that will not cause an aircraft to explode when struck.