South Korea: The Human Factor at the Focus of Air Accident Investigation With 179 Dead · Global Voices

It led to the death of 179 people on the fatal plane. The relatives of the victims are waiting for answers, which apparently won’t be long. The human factor in what happened Sunday morning (29.12. 24) at Muan Airport is carefully examined. If there were mistakes that caused the tragedy. The unanswered questions about the sequence of events that led to the death of 179 passengers and crew, analyzed on the Live News show with Nikos Evangelatos Kostas Lakafosis, Mechanical engineer- Aeronaut Engineer and Accident Investigator. CORVERSE It appears that the original version of mechanical failure on the aircraft’s wheels due to collision with a flock of birds, is not enough alone to justify the tragic results. As the newsit.gr explains Kostas Lakafosis “these cases are not rare, daily we have an airplane crash somewhere in some part of the world with bird swarms, and yet this does not lead to accidents. There are emergency procedures followed in such cases and any problem is highly likely to be tackled successfully. Obviously, each case is different, so as long as we do not have the full data that will result from the FDR and CVR records in this particular accident, it is not yet time for final conclusions. However, some important observations can already be made from the data so far, with more important observation that the operators had full control of the aircraft, after they managed to align it perfectly with the runway, having made a closed turn of 180 degrees to return from the opposite time to the same runway. This process is not common and is only followed in very exceptional cases when we have power loss in engines or when we have a fire on the aircraft. However, from the data so far nothing emerges from both, so the question mark remains for the operator’s decision not to follow the standard Missed Approach process that would give more time to airport rescue crews to prepare for the emergency landing.” CORVERSE But since the operators managed to return, align perfectly and make a very smooth landing in the center of the runway, the next question is why they had not lowered the wheels. The version of the mechanical failure is not so likely, since the aircraft was normally flying with at least one engine in operation (without being sure if it operated even with reduced power and the second engine), while no attempt has been made to activate the flaps to reduce the speed in an aerodynamic way (while the aircraft controls were apparently operating normally, otherwise the aircraft would have gone off the runway). The course that followed the aircraft to the point of conflict with the wall that existed “Many of what has happened seems to relate to the decisions made by the two operators under pressure of any technical problems they faced,” says Costas Lakafosis who complements that “the image of the aircraft in the last meters just before hitting the wall is not the image of an aircraft trying to stop, but perhaps an aircraft trying in vain to take off again, with all the power it has in its engines.” With a red line the course the plane would have followed if there had not been the wall that ended up “Nevertheless, given the circumstances, even if the wall had not existed at that point, we would not have avoided the worst. The aircraft had at least 250 km/h when it hit the wall, at this speed it would be impossible to stop before it hits somewhere else and would surely cause additional victims outside the airport.” In any case, the answers to all these questions will result from the analysis of the data from the “black boxes” and, above all, from the transcriptions of the conversations of the video recorder, who has been found and already examined by the specialized laboratories.