Disaster in South Korea could have been much smaller… if it weren’t for the concrete wall next to the track

Had it not been for a strange wall 250 meters from the end of the runway, the plane “would have crashed with most — possibly all — of those on board still alive.”

Images show the Jeju Air plane leaving the runway before colliding with the wall and catching fire at Muan International Airport, a tragedy that left 179 dead.

The accident, from which only two survivors emerged, could have been much less serious, experts say to , if it weren’t for that wall.

The aviation safety expert David Learmount He even said that if the “obstruction” had not been there, the plane “would have crashed with most — possibly all — of those on board still alive.”

The pilot reported that the plane had aborted the original landing, having requested authorization to land in the opposite direction. The plane then descended some distance along the 2,800 meter track and appeared to land without using wheels or any other landing object.

Learmount assured that the landing was “as good as a landing without landing gear can be: wings level, nose not too high to avoid breaking the tail” and the plane did not suffer substantial damage when sliding along the track.

The problem, which caused the plane to catch fire, was the collision with the concrete wall that was 250 meters away from the end of the track.

Theoretically, the concrete structure contains a navigation system that helps planes land, known as locator. It was 4 meters high, covered with earth and was erected to keep the localizer at runway level, in order to guarantee its correct functioning. It had the opposite effect.

“The reason so many people died was not the landing itself, but the fact that the plane collided with a very hard obstacle right after the end of the track”, guarantees the specialist.

In statements to, Christian Beckerta Lufthansa pilot based in Munich, called the concrete structure “unusual”. Normally, “at an airport with a runway at the end, there is no wall“, he highlights.

Chris Kingswooda pilot with almost 50 years of experience who flew the same type of plane involved in the accident, told the BBC that “the obstacles that are at a certain distance from the track they have to be fragilewhich means if a plane hits them, they break apart.

“It seems unusual to me that this is such a rigid thing. The plane, from what I know, was traveling very fast, it landed very far down the runway, so it would have gone well beyond the end of the runway. It’s certainly something that will be investigated”these.

“Airplanes are not strong structures — they are, by design, light to be efficient in flight. They were not designed to travel at high speeds belly down, so any type of structure could cause the fuselage to rupture and be catastrophic,” he added.

And he fears that this case is not unique: “I suspect that if we saw the airfields of many major international airports... we would encounter many obstacles that could equally be accused of pose a danger“.