S Korea orders all airports to install bird detection cameras

All South Korea airports will need to install bird detection and radar chambers of thermal images, after a plane crash in December last year killed 179 people.

The deployment is scheduled to happen in 2026.

The researchers said last week that they had found evidence of a bird strike on the Boeing 737-800 plane, with feathers and blood stains found in the two plane engines.

An investigation into the accident, the deadliest in the South Korean floor, is still ongoing, but will focus on the role of the bird strike, as well as a concrete structure at the end of the track, in which the plane crashed after making an emergency landing.

“Bird detection radars will be installed in all airports to improve early detection of distant birds and improve airplane response capabilities,” said the Ministry of Land in a statement on Thursday.

The bird detection radar detects the size of the birds and their movement paths and transmits this information to the air traffic drivers.

The Ministry added that all airports would also need to be equipped with at least one chamber of thermal images.

Currently, only four airports in South Korea are equipped with thermal image cameras. It is not clear if any of them has bird detection radars instead.

Sites that attract birds, such as garbage landfills, must also move away from airports.

At the beginning of last month, South Korea announced that seven airports would have their track security areas adapted after a review of all the country’s airports that were carried out after the accident.

The cause of the accident is still unknown, but aerial security experts had previously said that the number of casualties could have been much lower if it were not because of the structure in which the plane crashed after performing an emergency landing.

On December 29, the plane, from the Jeju Air budget airline, had taken off from Bangkok and was flying to Muan’s international airport in the southwest of the country.

At approximately 08:57 local time, three minutes after the pilots contacted the airport, the control tower advised the crew that was cautious with the “bird activity.”

At 08:59, the pilot reported that the plane had hit a bird and declared a sign of Mayday.

Then, the pilot requested permission to land from the opposite direction, during which the belly without its deployed landing train. He investigated the track and exploded after hitting the concrete structure, concluded a preliminary research report.

The flight data and the voice recorders of the cabin stopped recording four minutes before the disaster, an investigation into the black boxes was later found.

The 179 passengers aboard the Boeing B737-800 plane were between three and 78 years old, although most were 40, 50 and 60 years old. Two members of the cabin crew were the only survivors.