A Jeju Air 737 landed with its landing gear retracted and burst into a fireball after hitting a barrier, past the end of the runway.
This tragedy happened on Sunday, the 29th of December, involving Jeju Air Flight 7C-2216. This is a seasonal service that this Korean low-cost carrier currently performs four times weekly. It departs from Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport (VTBS) in Thailand, heading for Muan International Airport (RKJB) in South Korea.
On the day of this accident, there were 175 passengers and 6 crew on board the Jeju Air 737. The flight departed from Bangkok with a one-hour delay, using Runway 02R. Its crew initially attempted to land using Runway 1 in Muan.
A ground observer reportedly stated that the Jeju Air 737 flew through a flock of birds during this first approach. A number of popping sounds came from the aircraft’s engines after it hit the birds. Its landing gear was extended at this time.
The flight crew went around and declared a MAYDAY soon afterwards. At this time, it is not clear how much damage the Jeju Air 737 suffered after hitting those birds. However, its pilots soon decided to immediately return to land on runway 19, i.e. the other end of the runway.
Jeju Air 737 Makes Immediate Return
Video of the landing shows that the Jeju Air 737 came in with its gear retracted. The aircraft appears to have stopped transmitting ADS-B information during its first approach – which wasn’t the case during previous Jeju Air approaches into Muan.
Because of the lack of ADS-B information, we don’t know how fast the aircraft was travelling as it came in to land the second time around. Unfortunately, the video of the landing shows that the aircraft was travelling fast enough to go past the end of the runway.
The Jeju Air 737 slid past the end of the runway overrun, through another 300 meters of unpaved surface, before hitting a concrete barrier, which housed a localizer antenna. The aircraft immediately burst into flames.
Only two survivors have been rescued from the wreckage. Both survivors were cabin crew, stationed at the rear of the aircraft. Preliminary information suggests that air traffic control had issued a bird strike warning shortly before the aircraft’s first approach.
This Jeju Air 737 was fifteen years old. The aircraft had registration HL8088, and was a 737-800. Its first operator was Ryanair, who kept it in use until 2016. Jeju Air started operating it in 2017.
This is a breaking story; we will update it when new information becomes available.
30 comments
James Gibbs
in the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Uq0xNCOdkI at 0.12 you can see the right engine is still producing exhaust gasses and the left is not! Looks like they shut down the wrong engine – same as Manchester air crash!
James Gibbs
In this video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Uq0xNCOdkI you can see at frame 0.12 the right engine is still working (or at least has exhaust gasses) and the left engine is shut down! Looks like Midlands 2.0 with wrong engine shut down! Didn’t they fix this?
Nalliah Thayabharan
At 8:54 am the Boeing 737-800NG operating the Jeju Air Flight 2216 was authorized to land at Muan International Airport in South Korea. As the plane was preparing to land, it was warned at 8:57 am about the potential for a bird strike. A minute later, it issued a mayday alert.At 9:00 a.m., the plane attempted an emergency landing, being forced to go around again after the landing gear was not deployed. A minute later, it received authorization to attempt a landing from the opposite direction. Most pilots are trained for situations like this.
The crash occurred as the aircraft attempted to perform a belly landing,touching down 1,200 m (3,900 ft) along the runway, sliding down the runway on the engine nacelles with a sustained nose-high attitude. It continued 250 m past the runway threshold before colliding with an embankment holding the ILS array and exploding.
If they were in a stabilised approach the landing gear would be down WAY before the bird strike zone. The Boeing 737-800NG did a go-around with no problems.
Then nothing like this has ever happened, a plane comes in without landing gear, speed close to take off and on at least at 50% power until it contacted an object on the ground – Pilots missed alternate landing gear extension, alternate flap extension, approach and landing speed judgement, diversion, not correctly configure the aircraft for landing, way too fast, way too far down the runway before touchdown, 15-degree nose-up. Either a complete loss of throttle control or the pilots tried to climb out and it was too late.
We have seen pilots ignore repeated alarms in the cockpit, warnings from the GPWS many times including PIA8303 and Air France 447. This is more than likely another example of a crew doing everything other than what they should have been doing.
There are 3 hydraulic systems aboard the 737 – system A, B and Stand by. The A system powers the landing gear for retraction, extension, and nose wheel steering. The B system powers the flaps and leading edge devices, with an electric backup that can extend and retract the flaps. All have redundancy but a complete failure of all 3 hydraulic systems and the backup electrical system to operate the flaps is damn near impossible.
APU can provide electrical power to the electric motor driven pumps (EMDP’s) and thus supply hydraulic pressure. One of the amazing things that Captain Sullenberger did, when they first hit the birds on takeoff was immediately start the APU, before he did anything else, as he knew he might lose both engine power from the birds.
Hydraulics not required for emergency use of flaps and landing gear on 737. Pilots should be able to manually drop the landing gear no matter what. Landing gear can be manually extended with the 3 handles Right Main, Nose and Left Main behind crew seats on the floor, physically connected to each strut that when pulled releases the landing gear which falls and locks into place by their own weight and wind drag. On Boeing 737-800 NG, the manual extension handles will function with the landing gear lever in any position.
However it does take time. Crew only gave themselves a few minutes to execute check lists and final between loss of signal on initial approach and attempted go around.
There’s really no explanation for the gear being retracted other than the pilot forgot. The Control Tower should have informed them that their landing gear was not down though. The aircraft won’t even allow use of thrust reversers unless you have main gear strut compression, in this case with the gear still retracted there may not be any thrust reversers nor spoilers available.
The lack of ADS-B during the final landing implies a complete loss of power.Passengers from the same aircraft 2 days ago, reported engine was kept switching off during the flight.
The aviation industry is built on redundancy and there are very few single-point failures in airplane design or airplane operations A combination of unlucky factors including ongoing mechanical issues, a bird strike, and poor crew resource management caused this crash. Also it appears the airport was expecting an emergency landing.
My guessing
Bird strike with severe damage on the right engine and crew incorrectly shuts down the left engine, losing both engines.
Immediate turn back to land tailwind opposite direction.
Split decisions, forgot the landing gear.
The plane wasn’t ready for that belly landing at all.
– Nalliah Thayabharan
Noel Castley-Wright
I don’t think there was an engine shutdown when the plane is still accelerating while skidding along the runway. Birdstrike is definitely part of the equation, but there are more questions than answers. The plane is clearly not configured for landing, and does appear to touch down way beyond the runway threshold losing nearly half the runway… I agree the redundancy systems would allow you to drop landing gear even by gravity alone… but there are many other factors that you do not take into account that must be assessed by any investigator. the engines could be locked in full thrust from the go around, gear is retracted, flaps stowed and the aircraft gains speed and altitude… but then are they unable to deploy the landing configuration due to uncontrolled thrust as the flaps, slats because gear would be ripped off above a certain speed? and you just admitted we don’t have that data… We saw this previously with a Qantas A380 after an engine exploded not being able to reduce thrust or shut the engine down. The reason we lost data is a clue, since it tells investigators what systems were impacted. Whatever the case, and I don’t exclude pilot error nor any other option, but to lay blame immediately at the pilots without any supporting evidence is a little unfair and not appropriate. There was a message from a passenger that a bird was stuck in the wing… which wing we don’t know. So to assume it was just one engine or wing that was hit by a flock of geese is preemptive. We don’t know how many geese impacted the aircraft or where, nor do we know what impacts that had on all hydraulic systems or electrical power systems for flats/slate or Engine controls… Hopefully the black box will be able to give us the data be it is badly damaged. What is clear is the pilot chose to put the plane on the ground as quickly as possible, which is ideal when losing hydraulic fluid and subsequent control of the aircraft. One major contributing factor is the concrete wall that should never have been there! I have no doubt that if a collapsible antennae was installed as it should be, more people would be likely alive today.
Nalliah Thayabharan
Greetings Noel Castley-Wright !
You are absolutely right !! Your analysis isupported by facts and taking into account all relevant data is so correct.
All the best in 2025
Nalliah Thayabharan
MWX runway 19 has a Landing Distance 2800m. The end of RWY 19 is about 6 m below its threshold. The embankment is to raise the localizer array, to compensate for the runway slope. However, within the United States and Canada these would be required to be mounted on frangible support structures. You want the support structure to break-away and cause as minimal damage as possible in a scenario like this. You would not be allowed to construct an earth mound like this within the runway overruns. This localizer is about 150m off the overrun, which would violate North American Airfield criteria, but it’s a Korean Airport so regulations are different.
-Nalliah Thayabharan
Roy Moorman
What a horrible crash. seeing a plane disintegrate like that with many souls aboard reminds me of 9/11.
The earth wall and reinforced concrete localizer base is an obvious major contributor to the death toll.
But I’m having other questions on my mind:
1. Is it not standard procedure to start the APU as soon as losing an engine to regain some redundancy functions ?
2. Could the plane be configured for landing with only APU operational and both engines out/idle using normal electrical/hydraulical systems ?
byoung7012
On the 737-800, the APU does not supply hydraulics. It only supplies electrical power and bleed air.
Michael Meinl
But electic power will provide hydraulics through the electrical pumps (though on a much slower rate – this will slow down e.g. flap extension significantly)
Joe Kost
My question to this accident is – why is a massiv wall built at the end of a runway instead of an metal fence? There would be enough space for sliding out… nobody would have been killed… so sensless
byoung7012
What about the possibility that on the first approach to Runaway 01, when the controller advised the crew of a possible bird strike, they executed a go-around and also encountered a bird strike? Both engines could have ingested birds but possibly they did not immediately fail or maybe only the left engine failed at that time. They continued to climb out and retracted both the landing gear and the flaps(System B would be able to retract the landing gear and flaps} No. 2 engine may have still been producing enough power to make the new approach to runway 19, or they still had partial power on No.2. . One video showed the plane flying over with the No. 2 engine clearly appearing to be surging. With hydraulic system A out, they would have to deploy the landing gear manually and the trailing edge flaps with the standby electric hydraulic system. The flaps would take a lot longer to deploy using the standby electric hydraulic system. Maybe they just didn’t have enough time to get the flaps extended. They would still have flight controls by cables even if they had lost both hydraulic systems. But it does appear that No.2 thrust reverser was deployed which may indicate that they still had some power on the right engine. The thrust reverser can be deployed by either system B or the standby system. Maybe No.2 had rolled back to flight idle and they were forced to just try to get it on the ground any way they could. Obviously, without flaps, they would be landing at a pretty high speed and possibly a tailwind. They clearly did not touch down until they were very close to the end of the runway. ??? If they still had some power on No.2, they would have had hydraulic system B, but they would need a lot more time to deploy the flaps using the standby electric pump. I think they had partial power on No. 2, just not enough to keep the plane in the air for a normal approach and just not enough altitude and time left. Maybe if they had not run into a reinforced concrete wall a lot more would have survived. I think the pilots probably did everything possible to survive an impossible set of circumstances. I find it unbelievable that they had a concrete wall in the overrun area. I am sure the flight recorder and voice recorder will provide the actual answers. Prayers to all of the people affected by this horrible tragedy.
geoffrey nicholson
Keep speculating all, but hopefully the official accident investigators will be logical based on evidence.
NathanX
According to a BBC news article the Blackbox seems to be damaged so the investigation will take longer.
NathanX
I wonder if the Investigation will mention all of this.
Robert Ford
Why in the world would there be a concrete wall at the end of a runway?
Chris Huey
LOC ant enclosed in concrete barrier? That seems like bad idea. Gear should be able to come down by disengaging up locks. Flew 737-300 20 plus years ago….airplane was obviously flying. If I had engine power…would have got a plan together then started an approach. But don’t know all the circumstances. Regardless I try to learn something from these tragic incidents/accidents.
NathanX
The localizer is sometimes housed in a protective covering of some sort to increase the longevity of it.
But wouldn´t the concrete hinder the signals of the LOC?
Pekka Heikkinen
Speed seems to be quite high in the touchdown probably avoiding the stall? What is stallspeed of 737 without flaps? Friction doesnt decrease the speed enough…
NathanX
Granted that perhaps BOTH engines suffered engine failure after the bird strike AND the landing gear could not be extended the landing distance for a 737-800 would come to approx. 2600 meters.
Including the friction of the bottom of the aircraft, the distance is maybe reduced by 100m?
But maybe the pilots came in too high or too slanted?
I believe this incident was caused due to:
1. Bird strike
2. Landing gear failure
3. Pilots deciding to go around due to ATC
4. Them getting hit by birds anyway
5. Conclusion: I believe the aircraft was put into unnecessary circumstances caused by Atc and the Birdstrike leading to a belly landing because of damaged landing gear and no time to dump fuel for a safe landing.
Eric Langat
No mechanism for dumping fuel on a 737.
Patrick Chase
It wouldn’t have mattered. If they’d had time to fly in circles and dump fuel then they also would have had time to sort out the landing gear (which can be manually released).
NathanX
True just checked that.
Grein Tje
Mentor Pilot,
I think you are wrong stating the landing gear was extended when a ‘bird-strike’ hit the right engine. The video on;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1r8dl4RqMw
clearly shows the gear was not extended on it’s first approuch at altitude ~500 meters. The plane made a turn-around to approuch the airfield form the opposite direction with all flaps retracted and landing-gear up. I think they tried another go-around that failed tragically. And the wall constructed in between them was their death-sentense.
Aleksander Valentin
Such a tragedy.. a lot of these last days 🙁
There is an error in the article. The plane first attempted a landing on Runway 01 (ADS-B data stopped transmitting during this attempt), the plane seems like it went around and ended up belly-landing on Runway 19 – at the end of which is the super large reinforced concrete wall with localizer antennas where the plane disintegrated.
Spyros Georgilidakis
Fixed! Thank you
Pedro Almeida
Indeed, the three factors that strike me the most when reading the few info available (as very well described in this post) and watching the video are: 1. (likely) bird strike with landing gear down; 2. landing gear retracted on 2nd (final) landing attempt – question: Would a bird strike be capable of damaging the landing gear, or should I rather say its actioning, as none of its 3 components was apparently down, to such an extent to fully impede its deployment? ; 3. the apparently excessive speed at landing, where it looks like the “reverse” of the jets (which seems by the images to have been actioned) was far from capable of stopping or, at least, sufficiently slowing the aircraft’s speed to prevent the dramatic outcome. I’ve seen several other videos of belly landing where the aircraft can indeed stop, or significantly slow down, only with the reactors’ “reverse” (and belly friction, of course) – question: Would the same bird strike also have severely hampered the reactors’ power, thus significantly reducing their “reverse” power capacity?
Pedro Almeida
Furthermore, flaps seem to not have been deployed. This is therefore the 4th striking factor. Seems too much for consequence of only a bird strike. I read on flightradar24.com that there might have existed an attempt for a low pass to have the landing gear deployment checked (it wasn’t). Wrong altitude calculation? And that, I quote, “The last ADS-B message received by Flightradar24 was when the aircraft was at 500 feet on approach”, which is also strange and constitutes a 5th significant factor. We would, it seems, be facing a fatal sequence of events that might also include human factors.
norspeed
Would the reverse thrusters / spoilers / speed brake be deployed, if the landing gear wasn`t down ?
NathanX
@norspeed It could be that the landing gear indicator was giving a false indication.
And even if so would the reverse thrust have the ability to get triggered?
I don´t think they would have deployed the spoilers as it would have led to an increase in downforce.
Another (highly likely) possibility is that there was too much fuel due to no time to dump any for the belly landing.
Nathaniel Andrade
This is proper Information, other news sources never mentioned that the landing gear was DOWN when the bird strike occurred.