Plane crashes

Is the wall to blame for the high death toll in South Korea?

The plane hit the wall at high speed and crashed - would there have been fewer or even no fatalities without this obstacle?

(Bild: APA/Associated Press)

A few days after the fatal plane crash in South Korea, the focus is on the wall that the Jeju Air low-cost airline plane crashed into. Aviation experts suspect that there would have been fewer victims if this "obstacle" at the end of the runway had not been there. 

During the devastating emergency landing at Muan Airport on Sunday, the plane landed without its landing gear deployed, overshot the runway and burst into flames when it collided with a concrete wall. 179 of the 181 people on board died, two flight attendants survived in the rear of the plane. 

The investigation into the accident is ongoing.

(Bild: APA/AP)

Experts now believe that the tragedy could have been much less serious. Aviation safety expert David Learmount told the BBC that if this "obstacle" had not been there, the plane "would have come to a stop and most - possibly all - of the occupants would still have been alive". The concrete wall is located about 250 meters from the end of the runway. 

Expert attests to well-executed emergency landing
According to Learmount, the landing was "as good as a landing without flaps and landing gear can be: the wings were level, the nose was not too high to prevent the tail from breaking off". In addition, the aircraft had not sustained any significant damage when it skidded across the runway.

Experts believe that the emergency landing actually went well under these circumstances.

(Bild: APA/AP)

Expert: Wall "should not have been there"
"The reason why so many people died was not the landing as such, but the fact that the plane collided with a very hard obstacle directly behind the end of the runway," said Learmount. Another aviation analyst agrees: "Unfortunately, this thing was the reason why everyone died, because it literally crashed into a concrete structure. It shouldn't have been there," Ross Aimer, managing director of Aero Consulting Experts, told Reuters news agency. 

Lufthansa pilot Christian Beckert described the concrete structure as "unusual" and explained: "Normally there is no wall at an airport with a runway at the end." The South Korean news agency Yonhap explained that behind the wall was a navigation system that helps planes to land. Normally, these must be made of materials that break when an airplane hits them.