South Korea’s worst-ever plane crash highlights dangers of bird strikes 

Taipei, Taiwan – The fatal crash of Jeju Air Flight 2216 in South Korea has highlighted the risks bird strikes pose to commercial airliners.

Pilots told air traffic control that their aircraft collided with a flock of birds shortly before declaring mayday and making an emergency landing at Muan International Airport, according to South Korea’s Transport Ministry.

Footage of the crash shows the twin-engine Boeing 787-800 making a belly-flop landing on the runway without its landing gear deployed.

The aircraft is then seen skidding across the tarmac before hitting a concrete wall and exploding into flames, killing 179 out of 181 people on board.

Geoffrey Thomas, the Australia-based editor-in-chief of Airline Ratings, said that a bird strike was likely only a partial cause of the deadly crash.

Evidence points to the aircraft experiencing an electrical failure because it stopped transmitting location data – known as “ADS-B data” – to air traffic control shortly after declaring mayday, Thomas said.

“It appears as though these pilots were dealing with cascading failures, the exact nature of which we don’t know. What we do know is the ADS-B data stopped, they didn’t deploy their flaps for landing, and they didn’t deploy the undercarriage,” Thomas told Al Jazeera.

“Now, why those things happen, we don’t know, but it all happened after air traffic control warned of a flock of birds,” Thomas added.

It will likely be months before investigators determine the exact cause of the crash, which is the deadliest air disaster to ever take place on South Korean soil.

South Korean authorities are probing the crash alongside the United States National Transportation Safety Board in accordance with global aviation regulations because the Boeing aircraft involved was made in the US.

Bird strikes are a relatively common hazard for commercial aviation but rarely result in serious accidents.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reported 19,400 wildlife strikes – including birds – at US airports in 2023 alone. US airlines reported another 236 strikes across 55 countries in the same year, according to FAA data.

In the vast majority of cases, the most serious outcome is minor damage to the aircraft, with such incidents costing the industry some $1.5bn a year, according to Thomas.

Thomas said bird strikes have become more common due to the growth of air travel, with more than 120,000 commercial flights each day around the world, and the development of quieter planes.

Most often, though, aircraft that strike birds are completely unaffected, according to regulatory data.

Of nearly 1,400 bird strikes in the UK in 2022, fewer than 100 caused damage to the aircraft or interrupted the flight, according to the Civil Aviation Authority.

While bird strikes rarely cause problems, they have been implicated in several serious accidents over the years.

Investigators probing the 2019 crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 found that an object – most likely a bird – activated a flawed flight control system that caused the nose of the plane to pitch downward.

In 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 famously landed in New York’s Hudson River after colliding with a flock of birds shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport. The Airbus A320-214 was able to make an emergency water landing with no deaths.

In 1995, 24 Canadian and American airmen died after their aircraft crashed at an air force base in Alaska following a collision with geese.

Doug Drury, an aviation expert at Australia’s CQUniversity, said that a bird strike alone should not have led to a fatal crash.

Pilots were warned by air traffic control that birds were in the area, Drury said, while a Boeing 737 plane should be able to make an emergency landing even after losing power in an engine.

“There are more questions than answers, unfortunately,” Drury told Al Jazeera.

He questioned why the pilots failed to slow the aircraft during landing, why they reportedly landed in the opposite direction of the runway and why they landed beyond the normal “landing zone” position.

“Pilots are trained to slow the aircraft down to just above the stall speed to minimise ground run distance. Why wasn’t the runway foamed with flame-retardant material?” Drury said.

Muan International Airport should also have had safety precautions in place to scare flocks of birds, such as loudspeakers that mimic the sounds of shotguns, he said, which are commonly used at airports around the world.

South Korea Chosun Daily newspaper reported on Monday that environmental impact assessments at the airport had recommended the deployment of sound cannons, lasers and warning lights, but the rollout of such measures had been delayed due to runway extension work.

South Korea’s Acting President Choi Sang-mok, who assumed his duties just three days ago after the impeachments of the president and prime minister, on Monday ordered an emergency safety inspection of the country’s entire airline industry.

“As soon as the accident recovery is conducted, the transport ministry is requested to conduct an emergency safety inspection of the entire aircraft operation system to prevent recurrence of aircraft accidents,” Choi said.