South Korea’s worst air disaster: fury erupts over ‘mound of death’
Opposition MPs accuse officials of trying to bury a report that blames a known design flaw for the nation’s deadliest crash
Instead, Jeju Air Flight 2216 slammed into the solid concrete base about 250 metres (820 feet) beyond the runway’s end, erupting into flames and killing 179 of the people on board. The aircraft had attempted a wheels-up landing after a suspected bird strike damaged its undercarriage, investigators found.
The transport ministry’s Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board concluded that without the embankment, which contained 19 buried concrete columns installed in 2007 to prop up a guidance antenna, the aircraft would likely have slid a few hundred metres before grinding to a halt.
Officials had covered the structure with soil and turf to meet rules requiring soft terrain, but the hardened base breached international standards that since 2010 have required such facilities to use “frangible” – or breakable – materials designed to yield on impact.