Bird strike before jet crash kills 179

KING Charles last night paid tribute to the victims of a plane crash in South Korea that killed all its passengers and four of its crew.

- Giles Sheldrick

The doomed Jeju Air flight 2216 from Bangkok, Thailand, was carrying 181 people 175 passengers and six crew when it skidded along the runway and smashed into a wall before bursting into flames.

Two flight attendants were pulled from the wreckage and taken to hospital with one, a 33-year-old man, "fully able to communicate" despite being treated for multiple fractures.

Aviation experts are trying to piece together why the plane's lower landing gear failed to deploy after pilots scrambled to react to a bird strike that could have caused its engines to fail.

Geoffrey Thomas said: "It appears as though there has been a bird strike and one of the engines, the right-hand engine was impacted. This would have caused a lot of pressure in the cockpit.

"It could well be that the pilots simply forgot to put the landing gear down." He added: "Whether the engine situation was such that they felt they didn't have time to do that we don't know.

"But they would have declared an emergency and therefore the firefighting units should have been runway-side. A lot of things about this tragedy don't make sense."

Another possibility was the strike itself - a common but relatively insignificant safety risk - could have caused the airliner's wheels to malfunction.

Deadliest

But last night respected aviation authority David Learmount said structures at the end of the runway at Muan International Airport were to blame.

The former RAF pilot and flight analyst said: "There was a bird strike, the pilot called mayday and we know there was something wrong.

"The plane ran off the end of the runway but if that wall wasn't there everyone would be alive. That killed everyone. The big question is, what the hell was it doing there?"

Distressing footage online showed the Boeing 737-800 skidding along the runway before crashing into a perimeter wall and bursting into flames.