Bird strike wouldn’t have crippled landing gear, expert says of crashed South Korean jet
Aviation experts say a bird strike should not have crippled the landing gear of the doomed plane that crashed in South Korea and killed 179 people.
The twin-engine Boeing 737-800 carrying 181 people is believed to have encountered a flock of birds as it came in to land at Muan International Airport on Sunday morning.
Unverified video footage reportedly of the aircraft shows a burst of fire coming out of the jet’s right engine supposedly showing the moment the bird struck the plane.
Early theories had suggested it could have caused the budget airline’s jet’s landing gear to malfunction.
But experts have raised doubts with Australian airline safety expert Geoffrey Dell saying: ‘I’ve never seen a bird strike prevent the landing gear from being extended.’
Airline News editor Geoffrey Thomas said bird strikes happen ‘far more often, but typically they don’t cause the loss of an airplane by themselves’, MailOnline reports.
The doomed aircraft attempted a belly-landing before skidding off the 2,800-metre runway, ploughing into a concrete wall and bursting into flames.
King Charles and Queen Camilla have paid tribute to the 179 people killed saying they were ‘profoundly saddened to learn of the horrific air accident at Muan’ and the families and loved ones of the victims were in their prayers.
All 175 passengers were killed on the flight from Thailand’s capital Bangkok, with four crew members among those dead in the deadliest air disaster on South Korean soil since 1997.
Miraculously, two of the flight crew – a 33-year-old male and a female – survived the horror crash and were pulled from the burning wreckage, before being taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
