A Jeju Air crash in South Korea last week, the deadliest plane crash in years, has shocked the global aviation industry. The country is considered a model for how poor aviation safety practices can be turned into some of the best in the world.
Thirty years ago, South Korea had a dismal air safety record. Its flagship airline, Korean Air, experienced several fatal crashes in the 1980s and 1990s. In 2001, the US Federal Aviation Administration downgraded South Korea's air safety rating because it did not meet international standards.
Around the turn of the century, South Korea embarked on an immense project to overhaul its aviation safety practices, building on the experiences of other countries, including the United States. In 2008, South Korea had achieved one of the world's highest scores in a safety audit conducted by the International Civil Aviation Organization. At the time of the crash it was considered one of the safest countries to fly.
Air safety experts warned it was premature to speculate on the cause of the December 29 crash of Jeju Air Flight 7C2216, which killed 179 of the 181 people on board. It was Jeju Air's first fatal crash in its two-decade history, and the worst ever on South Korean soil. Jeju Air has said it is “fully cooperating” with the investigation into the cause.
With an extensive multinational investigation underway, the experts noted South Korea's experience in successfully improving its safety practices, and said authorities could ultimately learn similar lessons from the Jeju Air disaster.
“Over the past decades, Korea and its airlines and government agencies have done very well in implementing safety management systems,” said Hassan Shahidi, chairman of the Flight Safety Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides safety guidelines to the aviation industry.
In an effort to determine what caused the Dec. 29 crash, officials said they would look at multiple factors, including damage to the plane from a possible bird strike. The aircraft had descended without the wing flaps and landing gear deployed and was sliding down the runway at a faster than normal speed.
But another major subject of investigation is a concrete structure at the end of the runway that the plane crashed into before exploding in a fireball. Aviation safety experts said the collision with the barrier could have contributed to the high number of fatalities.
“The one area we'll see in the future, after this study is complete, is really, what about the airports?” said Dr. Shahidi. “This comes into question given the issue regarding the concrete wall at the end of the runway,” he said.
Aviation safety experts said the concrete barrier, built to house the so-called localizer antenna, used to help pilots maintain the correct airport approach, likely made the crash at Muan International Airport more deadly.
The space around a runway, also called the runway safety zone, is intended to provide unobstructed space for aircraft that may overshoot, overshoot or deviate from a runway during landing.
In the United States, the FAA specifies that security zones at most major airports must extend 1,000 feet beyond the end of the runway and 500 feet to the sides. The International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency that sets global safety standards, recommends a standard buffer zone of approximately 180 to 300 meters (591 to 984 feet) from the end of the runway and buffer zones on the sides of at least twice the width of the runway . the runway.
All structures within these zones must be 'frangible', meaning they must be capable of breaking or collapsing to minimize damage in the event of an accident. At Muan Airport, the hard concrete structure surrounded by a mound of earth is located about 250 meters from the end of the runway, according to local officials.
The cause of the crash is likely to have been “very complicated and unique,” Dr. Shahidi said. “But runway overruns do happen sometimes,” he said. “That is exactly why the safety zone at the end of the runway is so crucial.”
Immediately after the crash, officials in South Korea said the barrier at the runway met safety regulations. But in the days that followed, they added that they would investigate whether the placement and structure of the concrete-reinforced hill needed to be changed.
A series of deadly Korean Air crashes more than two decades ago prompted South Korea to reassess and rebuild its aviation safety protocols with much higher standards.
One of the worst accidents occurred in 1997, when a Korean Air flight crashed on the Pacific island of Guam, killing more than 200 passengers and crew. It was later determined that the crash was partly caused by pilot error.
In response, Korean Air began new efforts to improve its safety record. It brought in specialists from Delta Air Lines and Boeing to help innovate training and other practices. Korean Air also invited the Flight Safety Foundation, based in Virginia, to take a look at its operations.
Korean Air said in a statement that “it is committed to maintaining the highest safety standards.”
Around the time the FAA downgraded South Korea's safety rating in 2001, the country joined the membership council of the International Civil Aviation Organization.
South Korea has been trying to bring its domestic operations more in line with some 10,000 standards and recommended practices from the international group, said Sangdo Kim, a former South Korean ambassador to the agency and vice minister of civil aviation.
In 2008, South Korea received one of the highest scores of any country in an aviation safety audit, and to this day, Mr. Kim said, the country's regulators and airlines “continue to handle daily aviation operations very safely.” ”
Still, Mr. Kim says he sees room for improvement. Authorities aim to apply a balanced level of government oversight to all more than a dozen South Korean countries airports regardless of size, but in practice it is often difficult to do this at smaller airports such as Muan, he added.
The role of the concrete barrier at the runway in last week's catastrophe remains unclear, Mr. Kim said, but “if we find out that this was a major factor in the disaster, we need to improve the relevant regulations.”
Mr. Kim said he hoped the crash would once again spur aviation regulators inside and outside South Korea to promote improvements in air safety. At all airports, he said, “it is a constant struggle to eliminate all, even apparently minor, security risks.”
