623 cases in 5 1/2 years...Bird Strike Causes?

[Anchor]
Bird strikes, or collisions with aircraft and birds, are widely cited as one of the causes of the accident.

Overseas, frequent "bird strikes" have occurred more than 620 times in Korea in five and a half years.

Reporter Lee Ji-eun reports.

[Reporter]
Fireworks flash several times behind the wings of the airliner.

In January, a bird was sucked into the engine of a passenger plane landing at Incheon International Airport.

This phenomenon of gas and algae colliding is called 'bird strike'.

In this accident, it was also confirmed that the control tower warned of a bird collision and a minute later, the captain requested a Mayday, or distress signal.

[Yoo Kyung-soo / Aviation Safety Policy Officer, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport: At 8:54 a.m., the control tower was allowed to land. At 8:57 there was bird mover's advice and at 8:59 there was a pilot mayday request. And there was a final crash at 09:03.]

According to an experiment conducted by a domestic airline, the instantaneous impact reached 4.8 tons when a 900g mallard crashed into an aircraft flying 370 kilometers per hour.

Due to the location of the airport, there are many fields and rivers, so there is a possibility of colliding with birds.
In fact, the area around the runway of Muan Airport has mudflats and lakes, so there are abundant prey, so the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport classified it as a new cluster area last year.

Especially in winter, migratory birds flock to the Korean Peninsula in search of food, increasing the risk.

[Ham Eun-gu / Professor of Safety Engineering in Eulji: In the case of Muan area, they also applied for UNESCO (World Natural Heritage) as migratory birds. All airports will be affected by the tide, but this Muan side in particular is located in a place where there are many birds...]

From 2019 to the first half of last year, there were a total of 623 bird strikes reported in the country,

It is increasing every year except during the COVID-19 period.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport will focus on investigating whether there was a bird strike and how it is related to the landing gear failure.

I'm YTN's Lee Ji Eun.