Jeju Air flight disaster...179 dead, 2 rescued.

■ Hosted by: anchor Sung Moon-gyu, anchor Park Se-mi
■ Starring: Kim Da-hyun, social affairs reporter, Baek Seung-joo, Department of Fire and Disaster Prevention, Open Cyber University Korea

* The text below may differ from the actual broadcast content, so please check the broadcast for more accurate information. Please specify [YTN News Special] when quoting.

[Anchor]
Let's continue to think and look at it more with the experts and with the social media reporter. Baek Seung-joo, a professor of fire and disaster prevention safety at Open Cyber University in Korea. Please come in. And to my right is reporter Kim Da-hyun. First, reporter Kim Da-hyun, let's take a look at the accident management scene and explain it first.

[Reporter]
We are ready to do night work. You're watching a video of the accident management site at Muan International Airport. The brightly lit place is Muan Airport. All 181 people on board have been found, but field activities are still underway. This is because you have to check the remaining debris. Tomorrow, the fire authorities and others will put in manpower to check the belongings.

[Anchor]
When is this screen?

[Reporter]
It's quite dark now, but it's estimated to be about an evening.

[Anchor]
So, even though it's very early, it's still working on the site like that even after all the passengers have been confirmed. Professor Baek, how do you see the screen of the probationary site?

[Baek Seungju]
Other than the first two rescuers, some passengers have not been identified, but the death toll has been officially counted. In that regard, this is the case at this accident investigation stage. I think this is the excavation stage in excavation and restoration. At first, the rescue and recovery of the dead are carried out at the same time, and the recovery condition, the sea level, and the location of the rescued dead are clearly identified, and the data is collected and served. Also, after that, the lost items are recorded in their location and conditions, collected, and later restored to their original location, in some cases in the case of aircraft. Or you can restore it to a simulation on the computer and input time into the thinking process to interpret it. That's why this aircraft accident is so huge right now. The worst disaster in domestic airspace is recorded right now. Then, the accident itself must be dealt with, and as a lesson of this, a very careful approach and investigation are needed to prevent similar cases from occurring anywhere in the world, including Korea.

[Anchor]
So what you're saying is that out of 181 passengers, two were found alive, so they were taken to a hospital, and the remaining 179 were recovered dead. You're not just fixing the process, but you're also meticulously writing down the locations of the dead and the belongings, right?

[Baek Seungju]
That's right. Since it overlaps with the rescue process, it will be difficult to check the casualties of rescuers. After that, it will take a lot of time because there is a process to expand the area of the belongings. Separately, the accident investigation headquarters arrived at 10:10 a.m. And since they collected black boxes including flight recorders from the afternoon, there will be more data collection. As a separate process from this collection process, we are carefully approaching the lost and damaged conditions on the site because they become very important data for future investigations.

[Anchor]
Let's look at the situation at the time of the accident. According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, the control tower delivered bird collisionism while the plane was attempting to land. Then, a minute or two later, I declared a Mayday distress signal, and a crash occurred shortly after. Can the situation develop in such a hurry?

[Baek Seungju]
That's right. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport is in a position to make a very careful and official announcement. In that regard, the bird warning you already mentioned at the 3 o'clock briefing and the 5 o'clock briefing before the end of the accident was changed to the collision warning due to bird movement advice. As I interpreted the English word, if it is called an alarm, it could be misunderstood as an official procedure, so it was changed to advice. It's about that part, and after that, it's May Day, it's May Day in a minute, it's a landing accident in two minutes. This is three-thirds briefing is five, and this is six minutes. But this doesn't seem to be intentional. Naturally, it seems that this is an error that is transmitted because we put together information collected on the spot. Then we see that the golden time of the aircraft is 90 seconds, the time of that dimension of being careful because the tide can hit and the time that directly leads to the disaster was 6 minutes. It's a time that exceeds the golden time, but it's a time when reasonable countermeasures on the ground can't be taken at all. It can be started, but this physical time, such as cabbages with firefighters on the runway or spraying fire extinguishing medicine in advance, is a disadvantageous time, so a very urgent 6 minutes and 3 minutes before that, so less than 10 minutes, including questions that have not yet been revealed.

[Anchor]
Didn't the crash at 9:03 a.m. today and the death toll has increased quite quickly since then? So that's how 179 people are confirmed to have died in the end, right?

[Reporter]
That's right. First of all, I will summarize the current status of casualties today once again. First of all, 179 passengers were found to have died as you said. Among them, 84 were men and 85 were women, and 10 were still undergoing gender confirmation. In addition, as of 9:06 p.m., 88 people have been identified so far, which means that a significant number of people are still in the process of identification. In addition, it should be considered that there are no survivors except the two rescued, but these two were conscious at the time of discovery but were injured and taken to a hospital. The rescuer was a young crew member of a man in his 30s and a woman in her 20s, respectively, who was on the tail of the plane.

[Anchor]
Of the 179 deaths, 88 have been identified so far and 91 have not been identified? It's a situation where there are more people who are not good. And what is the nationality of the passengers?

[Reporter]
Most passengers are Korean nationals, but there are two Thai nationals. They were also found dead.

[Anchor]
Was it Bangkok where the plane flew today?

[Reporter] It's
.

[Anchor]
So, there were two Thai nationals and the remaining 179 were Korean. The search operation is now confirmed for all the dead, and now it will be a process of collecting belongings and checking everything as you said earlier. As I said before, what is the process of lifting the plane fuselage in the field now?

[Baek Seungju]
First of all, moving the fuselage and these parts is something to be cautious about, but if it's necessary for rescue and excavation, you can move enough. But you can also see the part that is supported by a rope like that. If the fuselage leads to an aircraft fire accident, the aircraft fire is exposed to a high heat of more than 1500 degrees Celsius and at least 1200 degrees Celsius for a considerable amount of time. Then, even if the metal aircraft is in shape, its strength will be reduced by less than half compared to when it was originally designed. It's reduced to less than a third. In the case of iron, even if only 550 degrees Celsius or more is exposed, it is reduced in half, so it becomes very vulnerable and investigates while supporting it like that. And there are parts where there will be accidents while moving, so it is necessary to settle them stably for now.

[Anchor]
It could be the process of moving the fuselage.

[Baek Seungju]
In order to prevent sinking, it may be a process of recovering while supporting the load. If you go back to the cause of the accident, the graphic came out briefly.Ma first tried to land and then went back up, and now even the most experts are confused. What they are curious about is why the landing gear didn't work because it landed without spreading it anyway. This and the relationship between the bird collision warning and the Mayday declaration. The connection to this. It's very important whether it exists or not. How do you figure it out?

[Baek Seungju]
Of course, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport will do so from the 3 o'clock briefing with accurate writing. If a mallard the size of an adult's head travels more than 300kg of more than 4 tons due to a physical impact, the impact can cause damage by getting stuck in the wings and breaking the cockpit window or getting into the engine and being tied between the landing gear, but now there is a phenomenon where smoke, which is presumed to have been on the verge of the May Day declaration, can be seen. There can be no mechanism for the landing gear not to come down because the engine is broken in a situation where the engine is defective due to a tidal current collision or a similar situation. There are two problems with that. So it's completely separated from the system. In addition, there is a manual situation where the landing gear does not come out, and the manual has a remote manual and a mechanical manual. That's why there's a double or triple safety device, so there's a part where the connection is broken. Then, if there is no physical or mechanical connection between the landing gear and the engine failure, it is clear that the landing gear has not come down. And while it is not an official result that a failure on the engine side is observed, it is also clear. If so, the landing gear may not have come down due to communication or human causes. In a way, there may be an error in a follow-up process to focus on it because of the previous accident. You can predict it like this.

[Anchor]
If you could explain it a little more.

[Baek Seungju]
It's not a prediction, it's a prediction. Given that there are some homages to the prediction, there was an accident in which the wheels landed without lowering at Daegu Airport in 1991. The landing gear wasn't broken at the time. We landed thinking that the captain and the assistant manager would have lowered each other, but we turned off the alarm system that informs this with light and sound in advance. And furthermore, the control station observed this and sent the wrong aircraft number, so we couldn't figure out the emergency. Like this . . . is a human error with all the errors overlapping at once. All three common errors are human errors. However, in this situation, if the preceding aircraft defects or bird collisions were focused on all the control stations, captains, and bookkeepers in this accident, it is possible that the alarm would have been ignored even if the alarm was turned off or not turned off. It's going to overlap. But if you start to attach situations like this and that because it's like this, it becomes a confirmatory bias. However, I'm not in a position to investigate, and I have various scenarios. The remaining cause can be found only by using an investigation method that erases the impossible things one by one. So there's a case like that, so it definitely can't have been like this beforehand.
[Anchor]
Then, if you cut off the two parts, the part where the bird collided and the part where the landing gear was not unfolded. Let's just hang up and see. It is also the government's position that there may be no direct connection, and it is also the position of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. But was there a bird collision? On the screen, I could see some sparks and smoke coming out of the right engine, and on the screen taken by the viewer. And one of the passengers texted her. There's also a story about birds in this part.

[Baek Seungju]
So, if you look at the timeline over there, it seems that the announcement by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport on a hourly basis is almost accurate. However, the error of about a minute can be ignored as soon as the second changes, but it is only about seven minutes from 8:54 when the pilot tries to land after the landing schedule to 9:01 when the accident is scheduled. Then, if you see it as a situation where you separate the two in that situation, if the control tower and the pilot recognized that the landing gear did not unfold, this is an emergency, but you have to go into the official fuselage landing process. This doesn't just solve the problem with the control of the aircraft. The fire brigade rescue team on the ground should take countermeasures on the runway in advance and divide the team.

[Anchor]
So, in a situation where I would have shouted May Day, it's not just May Day here, but there's something more than this right now, and the wheels don't come out. So you're saying that the landing gear didn't work, or even if you said it in detail, it was a situation where you couldn't adjust it in a minute or two.

[Baek Seungju]
That's right. So, the graphic video that I briefly showed you earlier in the current video, and if you look at the video now, the plane is in a fuselage landing state and the packaging part is cut off. It breaks and hits the wall.

[Anchor]
The gap is 324m.

[Baek Seungju]
That's right. That's how I explained it. That's not a deviation from the entire runway, but it's completely used the route where the runway is divided. In that situation, the fire brigade now has its own fire brigade and officially has three fire engines and 34 firefighters. If such an emergency landing situation is decided in advance, the fire brigade will be immediately deployed and divided into the first, middle, and end parts. And deploy the largest firepower at the end of the runway. Because that's where the risk is greatest. But I just changed the direction from direction one, which is 10 degrees from just north to the opposite direction of the same runway. Then, I changed it in 1 minute and tried to land in 2 minutes, but the fire brigade couldn't respond in that situation. If you had judged the fuselage landing in advance. So it's a physical landing where we don't physically have wheels. However, although it is an emergency, the official landing of the fuselage on the airline is a different part. That's why after the 5 o'clock briefing, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport is investigating the connection between engine defects and accidents that do not have a fuselage landing and those that do not have a landing gear unfolded. So it's reasonable to think that it didn't go into an official fuselage landing.

[Anchor]
As you said, if it was discussed with the control tower or the authorities in advance, there should be fire trucks all over the runway as you explained now.

[Baek Seungju]
It includes that part.

[Anchor]
However, I didn't see such a scene in the accident scene at all, as if it appeared after the accident. In terms of time, that's the only way to interpret it. It was very urgent
.

[Baek Seungju]
The urgent situation is that we also collected airplane video information earlier, so I think we can interpret it while analyzing the collected data. There are a lot of things I'm talking about right now, but in a way, one big scenario might be a completely unrealistic part of it. But this is what I said as an estimate that has been handed down so far.

[Anchor]
It's a situation that's inevitable, in terms of time. Since it's a situation that's been around 14 hours, after the accident.

[Anchor]
First of all, it seems that there is absolutely not enough time to communicate with the control tower or the airport. Approximately how much is the per hour and impact during the landing process?

[Baek Seungju]
Currently, it is not a field specializing in air operation that is collected in various ways, so it is difficult to tell you the speed in numbers. However, in the case of that model, there is one wheel on the head and two wheels on both sides of the rear wing. Then, the front wheels clearly did not come down, and all three wheels came down completely, so it is most important to stand as the braking force of the wheels. There are two directions when the aircraft tries to stand in that situation. Since there is a runway end point, it is not possible to grasp the runway of the entire three-dimensional situation, but you can also contact the control station and intentionally turn the route and deliberately leave the runway in the longest direction. Also, if you turn on the flat, spoiler, and wing angle and turn on the whole to turn on the air resistance, it's a process of reducing the speed. So, the air resistance is reduced by turning the wings of the reverse resistance as much as possible, and the length is reduced by increasing the friction force in the direction of the plane's runway downward, and in that situation, the length is determined even if it is not a normal runway. But now, completely. So, if you land from south to north, the plane flies low over the low retaining wall, over 300 meters, and if it's a runway, even though it's used its entire length, there can be various situations such as not being able to grasp that the landing gear didn't unfold when you chose the point in the first place, or there was a communication problem, or there was a physical condition where you couldn't try to go up again. That's why there are emergency response strategies that can accommodate one or two very dangerous situations, even though it's not a very normal landing in a variety of dangerous situations. It is clear that there were several layers of errors in the areas where such things were deleted. And it's shown that the errors are quite serious and in some ways ridiculous.

[Anchor]
multiple layers of error It happened at the same time, leading to a disaster. Anyway, to talk about the search operation for a moment, it would be better if you could show the dark scene screen and the dark scene screen together. First of all, all the dead have been recovered, and should we look at the remaining belongings or the process of searching for them now?

[Reporter]
Work will be done throughout the night. First of all, the fire department said that since all the personnel have been found, the minimum manpower will be used to check the belongings, the identification work, and the remaining debris work will be comprehensively carried out throughout the night.

[Anchor]
We've shown you the report before.Ma was such a bolt out of the blue. That's why only less than half of the dead people's personal information has been identified, and was there a unique situation among the passengers? I heard that there were students, too.

[Reporter]
There were students, too. Also, it was very sad because it's the end of the year, so I think there were a lot of people who planned a year-end trip as a family and a year-end trip to a warm country. So, if you look at the stories of those found one after another, they have had such a sad accident as a family on their way back from traveling, adding to the sadness.

[Anchor]
There were students and faculty members, so not only the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, but also the Ministry of Education and various local governments are scrambling to recover, and most of the passengers are residents of Gwangju.

[Reporter]
That's right. First of all, it was found that most of the passengers of the manufacturing air accident passenger plane were residents of Gwangju and Jeollanam-do. Specifically, as you said, Gwangju Metropolitan City had the largest number of citizens with 81. Also, there are 76 South Jeolla Province residents and 18 Thais from other regions. And it was identified as six crew members, including public officials. There were 13 public officials, including five from the Jeollanam-do Office of Education and three from Hwasun-gun.

[Anchor]
Most of them are talking about the cause of the accident and the details of the accident, but what is the cause of the accident that the Korea Airports Corporation said?

[Reporter]
The Korea Airports Corporation revealed the reason for the accident today, and the professor also told me, but I'll briefly reorganize it. The plane broke off from the end of the runway during the landing at Muan Airport and hit the airport structure, causing a fire. In the first place, this passenger attempted the first landing on runway 1, but it was difficult to land normally, so it went up again. After that, it tried to make a fuselage landing, a type of emergency landing, but it couldn't slow down, so it accelerated very quickly. In this state, it hit the outer wall hard and led to a fire. Also, you continued to say that the foldable landing gear did not work, so why this part did not work should be revealed through future investigations.

[Anchor]
Why didn't the landing gear wheel come off? That's what I'm most curious about right now, but among the citizens' voices in the citizens' interview and the video taken by citizens earlier, the plane couldn't land and try to take off again, but it couldn't take off. It didn't come up that much. There was an interview like this. How should I interpret that part?

[Baek Seung-ju]
Since it's literally an emergency landing situation, citizens' reports now help to deliver a lot of information, but there may be various questions in the part that it was about to pop up. So I thought this was just a normal take-off plane at first. Of course, it would have been lower than that angle. Because it's not to go up high, so if there was an engine defect from that time, I don't see anything like smoke shown in the later report video. That's why there are many simple birds, so the advice and warning that the birds can't see with the naked eye is how the pilot will determine the altitude with the naked eye. Therefore, it may not be in some ways to say that the failure began at that time because it is a process that may have been returned to the port by determining the most optimal altitude. However, in the part that Mayday continued immediately after the bird warning, we need to take a closer look at what will be the order in that short time because a minute or so can be added as an error now.

[Anchor]
Then, is it difficult to operate with just one engine?

[Baek Seungju]
One engine has enough functions as a spare engine for the left and right engines. When both engines produce thrust at the same time, we have straightness and adjust the thrust, but we can maintain only one-sided engines even if they operate normally because they have air resistance with the flat of the wing and the angle of the spoiler.

[Anchor]
So in a way, for an aircraft that has one engine broken, it's balanced when it lands.

[Baek Seungju]
It was said to be a departure in the landing situation, but it's straight. It was announced as a departure, but it didn't leave horizontally, but it left after the fence where the runway part ended. So it's a part that's out of length, but in that part, the effort to keep it level goes straight no matter how the friction force is the same, and it's the part where the length is trying to keep it level. So, although this is also a variety of situations, it seems that they have made efforts to the end to land as safely as possible. I think so.

[Anchor]
One of the problems that continued to be raised not long after the accident was that it was talked about for a long time with the length of the runway at Muan Airport. Muan Airport was in the process of extending the runway. I heard that you were working on extending it more than now, but how long is it estimated?

[Baek Seungju]
The total length of the runway is about 2.8km, which is shorter than other international airports, large international airports in Korea, but for example, it has a general length in these intermediate airports that are different from 4km and 3.6km. However, if we sympathize with the tragic accident and tell you in terms of whether it would have been better if it had been like this, it is an accident that deviated from the runway length in a straight line and crashed into the wall, so if the length was longer or the wall was weak and there was a flat area after that, we can infer it in this way. Although we wish we had stronger safety devices and better escape devices, the biggest problem is that we will go through this process, but regrettably, there will be enough of that, but this is not the level of the airport itself. Not really, because it's been acknowledged. I think the two should be approached with a different problem.

[Anchor]
Then, let's take a look at how the cause investigation is currently being conducted. How is the cause of the accident being investigated?

[Reporter]
Since this issue is so serious, we are dividing our roles across the government. First of all, in addition to the accident investigation, the on-site rescue and first aid are in charge of the complaint. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport plays a role in investigating the cause and establishing measures to prevent recurrence, and local governments play a role in handling accidents such as supporting victims' families.

[Anchor]
I heard that the police also set up a corruption headquarters in connection with this accident.

[Reporter]
That's right. The Jeonnam Police Agency formed an investigation headquarters today in connection with the aircraft accident. We organized a 264 investigation headquarters with Officer Na Won-oh as the head of the headquarters. The role is that it is very important to deal with the accident and quickly identify the dead. You do this at the same time. In addition, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport is in charge of the Air Railroad Accident Investigation Committee to investigate the cause of the accident, and the police are also here.

[Anchor]
Is the prosecution in?

[Reporter]
The prosecution will also share the information. First of all, I'm doing it at the Gwangju District Prosecutors' Office. We have set up an accident countermeasure headquarters with the district prosecutor as our headquarters. First of all, since it is such a large-scale accident, cooperation will be very important, but the prosecution also said that it will respond to the situation in the early stages by cooperating with related agencies such as the police and the National Fire Agency.

[Anchor]
Anyway, the police and the prosecution are all put in here now, and at the same time as the cause of the accident, this will also be investigated to see if there were any violations, right?

[Reporter]
Since it includes investigative agencies, we have no choice but to review these issues to see if there were any violations. First of all, various questions are being raised. The accident appears to have occurred while attempting to land the fuselage without the landing gear operating. First of all, I was not able to slow down, but I was strongly shocked by the structure of the airport, and as mentioned earlier, the question of whether the runway length is too short is being raised. Also, isn't the structure too hard? That's why the shock has become even worse, so I think investigative agencies will look into this part as well.

[Anchor] Professor
Baek, how do you watch that? As reporter Kim Da-hyun said, that structure, the outer wall, which collided at the end. If it was a wall, I think it would have gone through. What if he crashed at that speed? What do you think? What do you think about the part where it's too hard?

[Baek Seungju]
First of all, the situation now appears to be a scenario that was not expected even the moment it attempted to land. The captain and assistant manager also had a long flight experience of more than 6,000 hours and 1,500 hours. And if you were able to increase the friction of the aircraft fuselage and judge the runway sufficiently, you wouldn't try it if you didn't decide that it could be fully contained within the braking distance of the landing gear unfolding or at some point in time. So, the engine was normally defective on one side, but changing its direction after returning to the landing was not enough time, and it was changed on the spot whether it was or not, so I think it was judged that it could stand at a length of 2.8km or an additional 3km even in such an urgent situation. Because I'm sure I didn't try otherwise.

[Anchor]
So, there must have been that use when making such an outer wall. So, to call it just a wall of the airport, the plane crashed and the plane just broke into two rivers.

[Baek Seungju]
In that current situation, once you hit it, you would have had a very large amount of friction on the plane and the ground. And even if you look at the structure of the aircraft, it is said that you can see the front, but the engine in the wing part touches the floor. Then because of that situation, the back part is continuously causing friction on the floor. So, it may be a part where cracks and breakages may have started in advance physically. And in that situation, if a fire continues in the fuselage, the fire can again add to the damage. So that's actually the case. In the scenario, there is a regret that it would be longer and a regret that it would be softer and flat after that. When designing the plane, the part where we didn't make a scenario that the plane would hit is because other safer measures, whether they were judged or connected by themselves, are there parts like that. I'm not saying it's because of that, but obviously the previous error that went all the way to that process created that situation, like this. If our car had fallen into the lake in a car accident, we wouldn't have drowned without the lake. But this is a shame. There are two aspects of regret and this. So I think we need to look at two aspects: engineering design, cool, and what we're looking at as a disappointment.

[Anchor]
Finally, I will organize a few more things with reporter Kim Da-hyun and end it. How is the exact model of the airliner coming out? Is the Boeing 737 going to be like this right now?

[Reporter]
That's right. It's a Boeing flight. Flight 2216 is an aircraft manufactured by Boeing in the United States. The spirit is confirmed to be 15 years old.

[Anchor]
It turns out that the captain and the assistant manager have enough time to fly.

[Reporter]
That's right. At today's briefing by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, information on the airliner's captain and vice-captain was provided. The captain took up his current position in March 2019, and the flight time is 6823 hours, which is quite long. The bookkeeper has about 1650 hours of flight time. It is said that the current position will be held from February 2023.

[Anchor]
I see. So far, we have investigated the cause of the accident and the current treatment situation in relation to the Muan Airport plane accident. Professor Baek Seung-joo and reporter Kim Da-hyun joined. Thank you both.