South Korea plans to alter structures near runways at several airports after last month’s Jeju Air crash, when a plane that landed on its belly skidded into a concrete wall before exploding into a fireball.
At seven of South Korea’s 14 domestic and international airports, structures that house antennas and other devices that help pilots navigate did not meet safety standards, the transport ministry said on Monday.
The safety inspection was conducted after a Jeju Air passenger plane crashed at Muan International Airport on Dec. 29, killing 179 of the 181 people onboard. Officials are still investigating the cause of the accident, a process that has been hindered by the failure of the flight recorder to capture the final four minutes of data.
Jeju Air Flight 7C2216 descended without its wing flaps or landing gear deployed, then skidded beyond the runway, slamming into a concrete barrier that contained a localizer, an antenna array used to guide aircraft during landing. Aviation safety experts have suggested that the collision with the barrier may have contributed to the high death toll. It was the deadliest plane accident on South Korean soil.
Immediately after the crash, officials in South Korea said the barrier near the runway met safety regulations. But in the days that followed, they said they would review whether the placement and structure of the barrier needed to be altered.
The transport ministry’s review showed that at seven of the country’s airports — including the one in Muan — structures with navigation devices were built with hard materials, such as concrete or steel, that could make damage worse if a plane were to collide with them after overshooting or veering off a runway.
The ministry said it would finalize plans to improve the structures by the end of the month. The Korea Airports Corporation, a government-owned company that operates more than a dozen airports, including Muan airport, declined to comment on the transport ministry’s statement, but said it “would cooperate with the government.”
South Korea has long been regarded for its leading air safety practices. The Jeju Air tragedy stunned the global aviation community and led some experts to call for a broader review of barriers near runways not just in South Korea, but internationally.
The regions of an airport near runways, known as runway safety areas, are designed to provide an unobstructed zone for aircraft that may veer off the runway during landing. Any structures within these zones are supposed to be frangible, meaning they should break or give way to minimize damage in a crash, according to standards set by both the United States and the United Nations.
The International Civil Aviation Organization, a U.N. agency that sets global safety standards, recommends that a standard buffer zone extend 300 meters, or 984 feet, from the end of a runway. However, that distance is a guideline, not a requirement.
At Muan airport, the hard concrete structure, which was surrounded by a mound of dirt, lay about 250 meters from the end of the runway. Government investigators found that three smaller airports in South Korea — which serve the cities of Gwangju, Yeosu, Pohang and Gyeongju — had similar aboveground concrete structures. Other airports had ones with concrete bases that protruded partially above the ground or were entirely above ground and made of steel.
At South Korea’s main international hub, Incheon International Airport, localizers were housed in structures made from easily breakable materials, and thus not considered a safety risk, officials said.
At the same time, Sangdo Kim, a former South Korean ambassador to the U.N. aviation agency and deputy minister for civil aviation, urged international action on the matter because South Korean officials discovered such a wide variation in structures used to mount navigation safety devices.
“In order to prevent repeating similar accidents, all countries should check their localizer-housing structures on a voluntary basis,” he said.
