[inoffensivename]

Lots of airports have obstacles not far from the end of the runway. Burbank, Midway, Orange County are a few that come to mind.

Why did they need to land when they did?

Why did they need to land so soon after the mayday call? (only 8 minutes from mayday to crash, as I understand it)

Why couldn't they land on a longer runway?

Why did they land so far down the runway?

What forced them to land in a clean configuration?

As an airline pilot, these are some of the questions I have. The flight data and cockpit voice recorders should be able to answer these questions.

[cameronh90]

The obstacle obviously didn't cause the crash, but it's still probable that fewer people would have died if it wasn't there, and it seems to have been put there for no valid reason, quite recently, and against standard practice. Along with the reports that their bird control devices had not been implemented and that only 1 of the required 4 staff to repel birds were on duty. All these factors together may suggest an issue with their safety culture.

Though, I am a little sceptical of the claims that it would have hugely reduced fatalities either way. Runway excursions into unmanaged terrain at that speed don't usually work out well for the passengers, even when the terrain appears relatively flat.

I'm not an airline pilot, but I'm still curious to see what caused such an unusual crash, since there doesn't seem to be any single issue that could have caused what happened. So far, my best uninformed guess is a combination of pilot error and bad luck: the approach wasn't stabilised, so they started executing a go-around, and THEN a multiple bird strike caused catastrophic damage to the right engine. This may have led to smoke in the cabin/cockpit which they interpreted as a fire (or some other issue, vibrations etc.) that made them decide to shut down the engine, but they shut down the wrong (left) engine. So now they think they have a dual engine failure. At this stage they obviously don't have time to run through paper procedures, and they put the plane into clean configuration to maximise glide and attempt a 180 to try and land back on the runway. Then they either couldn't or forgot to deploy the gear, and floated down the runway partly due to ground effect from being at an unusually high speed, thus landing at high speed almost halfway down the runway. Thoughts?

[tolciho]

"Normal Accidents" is a term for when things, well, normally go sideways in complex systems, and there's a whole book on it. Otherwise, it's pretty typical in disasters for there to be a laundry list of root causes and contributing factors: the Titanic was going too fast, there was hubris, and icebergs, and it was sad when the great boat went down. Could the disaster have been missed or been less bad if one or several factors had rolled up some other result? Maybe! That's what a full investigation is for, to suss out what went wrong and what things are most fixable.

[dredmorbius]

A favourite! By Charles Perrow (1925-2019).

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents>

[ak217]

I don't know why the pilots landed the way they did but the structure was there for a valid reason. It's the runway localizer antenna. It was elevated off the ground to protect it from flooding. Should it have been frangible, yes, but it's not at all out of the ordinary as far as structures near runways go, and I think the focus on it is sensationalist and misguided.

[cameronh90]

By structure I meant the dirt mound with a concrete wall inside it, not the localizer. Entirely normal to have a localizer, but usually on a frangible structure if it needs to be elevated.

[jmward01]

These were my thoughts exactly. Even if they lost all engines/power/hydraulics they would have had 8 mins to start up the APU so gear and flaps wouldn't have been an issue and clearly they still had some control. Did they try to go around and lose all power on the go? Gear up landings do happen in GA but I can't think of the last commercial aviation gear up landing. There will probably be a lot of useful things coming out of this. Changing design and placement of structures at the end of runways probably isn't a big one though.

[pfannkuchen]

Were those obstacles installed by the airport though? I thought it was like stuff on land outside of the airport for those other examples.

[dmurray]

Does it matter? Either it's safe to have obstacles within 300m of the end of the runway, and this was a reasonable location for the Korean airport to put their localizer in, or it's not, and the likes of Burbank should shorten their runway to ensure there's sufficient buffer space at the end of it.

[brookst]

I’m suspicious of decontextualization in the name of forming “either X or Y” absolutes.

Either 8 character passwords are fine and secure, or bad and should be banned? With no context between “€x8;,O{w” and “password”?

I suspect runway design has more variables than just distance to obstacles.

[hmcq6]

>and the likes of Burbank should shorten their runway to ensure there's sufficient buffer space at the end of it.

... you can't be serious with this? 300 more feet of unused runway is equivalent to if not better than 300 feet of buffer. You're fixated on following the "rules" without any understanding as to why they exist.

[dmurray]

Yes, I'm being a bit facetious. I agree with you: there shouldn't be a hard rule of "no obstacles within 300m of the runway, and the Muan airport authorities were negligent in having one".

If they'd shortened the "runway" by 300m (let's say the unused space was still tarmacked and empty, but not designated as a runway, although I understand there are better materials for arresting overruns) would all those people still have died and would people still be blaming the airport layout?

Perhaps the pilot would have made a different decision if the runway was advertised as 2500m instead of 2800m, but that also suggests people are looking at the wrong thing, and pilots looking for emergency landings should consider not only the runway length but also any buffer available.

[iso8859-1]

The localizer antenna mount (the concrete) was inside the airport perimeter. See diagram:

https://multimedia.scmp.com/embeds/2024/world/skorea-crash/i...

[sho_hn]

The OP knows this already.

What they were saying is that just because other airports feature runways situated next to natural obstacles and this is allowed and equally dangerous, it doesn't mean this airport needed to have this particular, deliberately designed and implemented obstacle next to the runway.

The reason for the concrete-reinforced berm was typhoon resilience. It begs the question whether there are alternative designs that are trade of requirements better.

[unyttigfjelltol]

And if an accident occurred because a typhoon washed out the antenna, people would argue a concrete foundation would have been safer.

As an aside, this reminds of the consideration highway bureaus in the US give to trees and poles.[1] Trees are removed and poles should break easily and fall after a vehicle impact. This comes to mind because I have given most thought to these considerations as a pedestrian, regretting tree removals and feeling exposed to passing cars in a system designed to accommodate them safely (for them) departing the roadway anywhere, anytime. Of course, sometimes broken poles fall on cars or people, power outages are more routine especially after vehicular accidents, and there are other tradeoffs too, some of which are safety-related.

[1] https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/roadway_dept/countermeasures/saf...

[darkhorn]

Nice questions. But it doesn't give them right to build a concrete obstacle for lights, when it is possible to make it without hard obstacle.