On December 29, 2024, Jeju Air Flight 2216 was scheduled to depart from Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand to Muan International Airport in Muan County, South Korea. During flight, the plane suffered a bird strike. A mayday issue was reported, and a go-around was performed.
During the second landing attempt, the landing gear did not deploy properly and the plane “belly landed” well ahead of the normal touchdown zone. It slid across the runway and completely overran and crashed into a concrete structure that supported the antenna for the instrument landing system. It exploded after, killing most.
179 passengers were sadly killed, along 4 out of the 6 cabin crew members. The two surviving crew members were seated towards the end of the plane which detached from the fuselage. They were rescued with major injuries. Officials labeled it the “country’s deadliest aviation accident in almost three decades”
The aircraft had made 13 other successful flights in the previous 48 hours. No issues were found in the safety pre-check before its final flight. The type of plane was a Boeing 737-800. Jeju Air initially said that aircraft had no prior incidents beforehand, although data from Korea had shown different. In February 2021 the aircraft was damaged when the tail struck the runway during its takeoff.
The ministry stated,
“It was unclear why the devices stopped recording, adding that it will work to determine the cause. It was discovered that both the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder both had stopped working around roughly 4 minutes before the crash.”
After being sent to the United States to be analyzed, it was determined that the flight data recorder was damaged and missing a connector. The absence of some of the most key parts leaves a major setback. It still isn’t fully clear what caused it, investigation is roughly estimated to take months. A recording of the actual landing showed neither the front or back landing gear deploying at the time of the crash.
The chairman of Korea Association for Aviation Security, Hwang Howan stated,
“The black box data is crucial in the investigation, if the investigators don’t have it, it will create a serious problem for them.”
Memorials were set up across South Korea for the deceased. All of the missing data just continues to add more and more mystery which leads us to wonder, will we ever find out what truly happened to cause the destruction of Flight 2216?