Jeju Air crash pilots ‘switched off wrong engine’ after bird strike

Officials have ruled the pilots at fault for a South Korea plane crash that killed 179, angering victims’ relatives.

The Jeju Air Boeing 737 exploded when it failed to stop while landing at Muan airport and hit an earth and concrete embankment at the end of the runway. Picture: AFP

Errors by the pilots of a South Korean airliner preceded the crash last December that killed 179 people after a bird strike, officials have reported.

Investigators said the pilots appeared to have switched off the wrong engine after the incident as the Jeju Air Boeing 737 approached the coastal Muan airport on a flight from Bangkok on December 29.

Officials took back copies of the interim findings from reporters after relatives of the victims disrupted a news conference on Saturday and accused them of prematurely blaming the pilots for South Korea’s worst airline disaster.

Investigators told relatives and their lawyers just before the media event that they had concluded there was no engine defect on the Boeing and that errors by the pilots had led them to land the aircraft too fast and without the wheels being down.

The plane exploded when it failed to stop and hit an earth and concrete embankment at the end of the runway. Two crew, seated in the rear, survived.

Investigators concluded there was no engine defect on the Boeing and that errors by the pilots had led them to land the aircraft too fast and without the wheels being down. Picture: AFP

The preliminary findings confirmed the conclusions aviation experts had reached from the final flight path and video of the crash. Power to the aircraft’s flight recorders was cut off for the last four minutes of the flight, hampering the investigation.

After hitting the flock of birds, believed to be Baikal teal ducks, one of the two Boeing engines failed and the other continued to produce some power. “A pilot may have mistakenly turned off the engine,” investigators said.

An official told South Korea’s MBN television news: “The pilot should have turned off the right engine, which was severely damaged, but he turned off the left engine, which was spinning, and the black box and power went out.”

The pilots also ignored standard procedure for continuing a landing after a bird strike on approach. They climbed back up and performed unorthodox manoeuvres, turning to make a rushed landing in the opposite direction.

After relatives burst into the briefing, officials took copies of the report back from reporters, saying it had not been officially issued. “They’ve just blamed it all on the pilots,’‘ a man shouted.

Kim Yu-jin, head of the relatives’ group, said: “When investigators take a position, it should be accompanied by documents that support [that] and convince the bereaved family that their conclusions are inevitable. We were only given their conclusions.

“We have repeatedly asked them to be careful about these disclosures because the way that the results of the investigation are communicated can have an impact on the compensation that families receive.’‘

An interim report by the Indian Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau over an Indian Airlines flight that crashed on June 12 travelling from Ahmedabad to London has similarly provoked anger in some circles.

The report said the plane’s two engines were starved of fuel after cut-off switches were activated. One of the pilots noted the cut-off and challenged the other, who denied closing the switches, it said. This detail led to speculation the crash was a deliberate act by one of the pilots.

The Federation of Indian Pilots criticised the report for lacking “comprehensive data” but some experts were adamant the pilots were most likely to blame. Steven Scheibner, a Boeing captain with American Airlines, said on YouTube: “It could be the brain fart of the century. It could be deliberate.”

Errors in engine management under pressure have led to several airline disasters. A prominent accident involved a British Midland Boeing 737, which crashed short of East Midlands airport, in Kegworth, Leicestershire, in 1989, killing 47 people.

The Times