South Korea orders inspections of all Boeing 737-800 planes, including the one that crashed in which 179 people died

Seoul, South Korea – South Korean officials said Monday they will conduct safety inspections of all Boeing 737-800 planes operated by the country’s airlines as they struggle to determine the cause Plane crash that killed 179 people a day earlier.

Sunday’s crash, the country’s worst air disaster in decades, sparked a wave of national sympathy.

Many people are worried about how effectively the South Korean government will deal with the disaster as it struggles with a leadership vacuum following the recent change of power Impeachment proceedings against President Yoon Suk Yeol And Prime Minister and incumbent President Han Duck-soothe country’s two highest officials, amid political unrest caused by Yoon Martial law was briefly declared earlier this month.

New acting President Choi Sang-mok chaired a task force meeting on the crash on Monday and ordered authorities to conduct an emergency review of the country’s aircraft operating systems.

“The core of a responsible response would be to overhaul aviation safety systems as a whole to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents and build a safer Republic of South Korea,” said Choi, who is also deputy prime minister and finance minister.

The Boeing 737-800 of the South Korean low-cost airline Jeju Air aborted its first landing attempt for unclear reasons. Then, on its second attempt to land, it received a bird strike warning from the ground control center before its pilot issued a distress signal. The plane landed without the front landing gear extended, overshot the runway, hit a concrete fence and exploded in a fireball.

Alan Price, a former chief pilot at Delta Air Lines and now a consultant, said the Boeing 737-800 is a “proven aircraft” that belongs to a different class of aircraft than the Boeing 737-800 Boeing 737 Max jetliner that was linked to fatal accidents in 2018 and 2019.

But South Korea’s transportation ministry said Monday that it plans safety inspections of all 101 Boeing 737-800 planes owned by the country’s airlines, as well as a broader review of safety standards at Jeju Air, which operates 39 of those planes. Senior ministry official Joo Jong-wan said representatives from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and Boeing were expected to arrive in South Korea on Monday to take part in the investigation.

Ministry officials also said they would examine whether Muan airport’s localizer – a concrete fence with a series of antennas designed to safely guide planes during landings – should have been made of lighter materials that would break more easily on impact.

Joo said the ministry found that similar concrete structures also existed at other domestic airports, including on Jeju island and the southern cities of Yeosu and Pohang, as well as at airports in the United States, Spain and South Africa.

Video of the crash showed that the pilots did not operate flaps or slats to slow the plane, indicating a possible hydraulic failure, and that they did not manually lower the landing gear, indicating they ran out of time, John Cox said , a retired airline pilot and CEO of Safety Operating Systems in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Still, the plane was under control and flying straight, and damage and injuries likely would have been minimized had the barrier not been so close to the runway, Cox said.

Other observers said the videos showed the plane probably had engine trouble, but the landing gear malfunction was likely a direct cause of the crash. They said there was probably no connection between the landing gear problem and the suspected engine problem.

Earlier on Monday, another Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by Jeju Air was returning to Seoul’s Gimpo International Airport shortly after takeoff when the pilot noticed a problem with the landing gear. Song Kyung-hoon, a Jeju Air executive, said the problem was resolved through communication with a land-based equipment center, but the pilot decided to return to Gimpo as a precaution.

Local media reported that 21 passengers opted out of boarding an alternative flight to Jeju for safety and other reasons, Agence France-Presse reports.

Ministry officials said Monday that the crashed plane’s flight data and cockpit audio recorders were taken to a research center at Gimpo Airport before being analyzed. Ministry officials previously said it would take months to complete the investigation into the crash.

The Muan crash is South Korea’s worst aviation disaster since 1997, when a Korean Airlines plane crashed in Guam, killing 228 people on board.

The crash left many South Koreans shocked and embarrassed, and the government announced seven days of national mourning until January 4. Some questioned whether the crash was linked to safety or regulatory issues, such as a 2022 Halloween massacre in Seoul that killed 160 people and the 2014 ferry sinking that killed 304 people came.

According to the Transportation Ministry, authorities have identified 146 bodies and are collecting DNA and fingerprint samples from the other 33.

Park Han Shin, a representative of the bereaved families, said they were told the bodies were so badly damaged that officials needed time before they could return them to their families.

“I demand that the government mobilize more personnel to bring back our brothers and family members as safely and quickly as possible,” he said, choking back tears.

The crash was another major news for South Koreans already reeling from a political crisis triggered by Yoon’s martial law decree, which brought hundreds of troops onto the streets of Seoul and revived traumatic memories of previous military rule in the 1970s and 1980s let.

The political turmoil led the opposition-controlled National Assembly to impeach Yoon and Han. The security minister resigned and the police chief was arrested for his role in enforcing martial law.

The lack of senior officials responsible for managing disasters has raised concerns.

“We are deeply concerned about whether the Disaster and Security Response Headquarters can really handle the disaster,” the mainstream newspaper JoongAng Ilbo said in an editorial on Monday.