Pre-flight checks found no problems, says Jeju Air CEO

A pre-flight inspection of a Jeju Air passenger plane hours before it crashed in South Korea, killing 179 people, found “no problems,” the airline said.

“Nothing abnormal was noticed on the landing gear,” the airline’s chief executive, Kim Yi-bae, said at a news conference in Seoul, as investigations continue into why the wheels were not down when it made a landing. emergency.

The plane was traveling from Bangkok when it crashed at Muan International Airport on Sunday, bursting into flames and killing all on board except two crew members. after skating against a wall.

Investigators are still working to identify the victims and establish what caused the deadliest plane crash ever in South Korea.

Many questions remain unanswered and researchers are looking into the role that a bird strike or weather conditions may have played.

They are also focusing on why the Boeing 737-800 did not have its landing gear down when it arrived on the runway shortly after 09:00 local time (00:00 GMT) on Sunday.

Hundreds of grieving relatives have been camping at Muan airport, furious that they have yet to see the bodies of their loved ones.

So far only some of the victims’ remains have been returned to their families. On Tuesday, four of them were transported to funeral homes, but most other families are still waiting for their loved ones to be identified.

Answering questions about the company’s safety procedures on Tuesday, Jeju Air CEO Kim Yi-bae said the plane would not have been cleared to take off if the maintenance team had not approved its safety.

He said its pilots were trained to regulatory standards and the company had two full flight simulators.

“We have 12.9 maintenance workers per aircraft, up from 12 in 2019,” he said.

“We have a strict maintenance checklist, things can’t be missed. If something was missed, it would be a serious problem.

“As to whether the landing gear functioned properly, that is directly related to the accident investigation and we are not in a position to know at this time.”

Kim said the airline would reduce its air traffic this winter by 10 to 15% to be able to do more maintenance work on the planes, but he said this was not an admission that the company was operating too many planes.

He added that they would increase their weather monitoring before and after flights.

Kim also acknowledged that over the past five years, Jeju Air had paid the most fines and faced the most administrative actions of any Korean airline, but said the company was constantly improving its safety record.

He said he was committed to strengthening the company’s security and maintenance procedures, adding: “Our goal is to restore your trust in us by strengthening our security measures.”

Kim said the airline was preparing emergency compensation for the victims’ families and was covering the cost of funerals.

The money will be released soon, he said, before the insurance process is completed. He added that company employees are on site to provide psychological counseling to the families.

The 179 passengers on flight 7C2216 ranged in age from three to 78, although most were between 40, 50 and 60 years old, according to the Yonhap news agency. Two Thai nationals were among the dead and the rest are believed to be South Koreans, officials said.

Many relatives are frustrated by the length of time the process of identifying the victims’ bodies has taken, but officials say it is challenging because the people on board were severely burned in the fire after the crash.

A man the BBC spoke to at the airport said his nephew and his nephew’s two children had been on a celebratory trip to Thailand to mark the end of the university entrance exams. All three died on the flight.

“I can’t believe the whole family is missing,” Maeng Gi-su, 78, told the BBC. “My heart hurts so much.”

The runway at Muan International Airport will remain closed for another week while forensic teams collect more remains and debris.

Investigators began inspecting the plane’s two black boxes — the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder — on Tuesday.

The second device is missing a critical connector, they say, which will make data extraction difficult. This could prolong the search for answers as to why this plane was forced to land without its landing gear.

Officials also said they are examining regulations around a concrete barrier that the plane crashed into when it skidded past the end of the runway.