On 29 December 2024, a Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 crash-landed at Muan International Airport in South Korea with its landing gear retracted, overran the runway, and struck a concrete barrier at the far end of the runway. Of the 181 people on board, 179 were killed. Only two flight attendants, seated at the rear of the aircraft, survived. It was South Korea’s deadliest aviation accident in 27 years and one of the worst in the world in over a decade.
The aircraft, operating as Flight 2216 on a route from Bangkok, Thailand, had been cleared to land when controllers issued a bird activity warning shortly before 09:00 local time. A bird strike damaged both engines, and the crew declared an emergency and initiated a go-around — a procedure to abort the landing and climb away to attempt another approach. During the go-around, investigators later found, the pilots shut down the left engine, which had been operating normally, instead of the right engine, which had been badly damaged by the birds. With the wrong engine shut down, the aircraft lost thrust and could not climb safely. The landing gear, which had been retracted for the go-around, could not be extended in time. The aircraft came in for a belly landing — touching down on its fuselage rather than its wheels — at high speed, skidded the full length of the runway, and overran the end by approximately 250 metres.
At the end of the runway sat a concrete mound supporting the airport’s instrument landing system — a navigation aid that helps aircraft line up on approach. The aircraft struck the mound at speed. The impact destroyed most of the fuselage and triggered a fire. The two survivors were rescued from the tail section, which had separated from the rest of the aircraft on impact.
Investigators quickly identified a second, deeply troubling factor: the concrete mound should never have been there. South Korean safety standards adopted in 2003 require navigation equipment located within 240 metres of a runway end to be mounted on structures designed to break on impact — fragile steel frames, not solid concrete. A government audit carried out after the crash found that the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport had been approving non-compliant installations of this kind for more than 20 years at eight airports around the country, including Muan. A government-commissioned simulation concluded that all 179 victims would likely have survived had the barrier been built to the required breakable standard.
In the days following the crash, South Korean authorities ordered inspections of all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by domestic carriers and announced plans to tighten regulation of low-cost airlines. All 14 non-compliant localiser installations at airports around the country were ordered to be replaced with breakable structures.
The crash was South Korea’s worst since Korean Air Flight 801, which crashed on approach to Guam in 1997, killing 228 people. For the aviation industry globally, the Muan accident served as a sharp reminder that survivable accidents can become fatal ones when airport infrastructure fails to meet basic safety standards — and that regulatory oversight of that infrastructure cannot be taken for granted.
Key vocabulary:
- belly landing – an emergency landing in which an aircraft touches down on the underside of its fuselage rather than on its landing gear; also called a gear-up landing, it typically results in the aircraft skidding along the runway
- go-around – a procedure in which a pilot aborts a landing approach and climbs away to make a second attempt; the landing gear and flaps are retracted to reduce drag during the climb
- bird strike – a collision between an aircraft and one or more birds; at high speed, even small birds can cause serious damage to engines, windscreens, and other components
- instrument landing system (ILS) – a ground-based radio navigation system that guides aircraft onto the correct approach path and descent angle for landing, especially in poor visibility conditions
- localiser – part of the instrument landing system that provides lateral (left-right) guidance to pilots on approach; localiser antennas are typically positioned beyond the far end of the runway
- runway overrun – an accident in which an aircraft travels beyond the end of the runway during landing or a rejected take-off; airports are required to provide a clear safety area beyond the runway end to reduce the consequences
CEFR Level B1-B2 / ICAO Level 4-5