What’s HAPPENING With The Jeju Air Crash Investigation?!

0:01 December the 29th, 2024 was supposed to be a routine arrival for Jedju Flight 2216. They were flying in one of the most commonly used and reliable aircraft in the world in calm and generally good weather. But during the final moments, something went catastrophically wrong. Just minutes before their fateful landing attempt, the pilots radioed in a Mayday call, reporting a bird strike and then requesting priority. Moments later, a series of tragic events ended with the plane completely destroyed with the accident killing 179 of the 181 people on board. Only two flight attendants survived. At first, it was pretty clear that an encounter with a flock of birds at the worst possible

0:47 time was the root cause to this tragedy. And it has now been 7 months since it happened with newly released findings suggesting a far more complicated picture than just simple bird strikes. The investigators are now saying that the pilots may have shot down the wrong engine. And like I mentioned in my first video on this subject, it appears certain that the aircraft lost all electrical power before the crash. Plus, the airport infrastructure itself may have contributed to the scale of this disaster. But I'll get to that later. [Music] In any case, families of the victims have obviously been loudly demanding answers, and they have now joined South Korea's pilot unions in openly criticizing the way that this

1:33 investigation is being handled. So, what new information have we learned since the last time I covered this? And what can we expect going forward? Stay tuned. Before I start, let's go through a quick recap of what we do know. Julight 2216 was a scheduled international service from Bangkok over to Muan Airport in South Korea's South Jiola province. The aircraft used was a Boeing 737800. First delivered to Ryan Air back in 2009, and it had then been operated by JJU Air since 2017. On board the flight, there were 173 passengers and eight crew members, giving a total headcount of 181. The flight initially proceeded normally

2:19 until the final approach where at the time 0857 local, the crew reported a bird strike and soon declared an emergency. The aircraft kept flying and initially gained some altitude in what looked like a normal goaround before attempting a landing on the opposite runway 19 at Moana. Surveillance footage and eyewitness reports then confirmed that the aircraft landed with its landing gear retracted and after making contact on its fuselage and engine cells far down on the runway. The jet then overran the end of the runway and struck a concrete structure that had been built to hold the localizer antenna for the ILS. This completely destroyed the aircraft and a post impact fired and followed with the rescue crews responding within

3:04 minutes. But out of the 181 occupants on board, only two flight attendants survived who had been both seated near the back of the aircraft. At the airport was immediately shut down for all other traffic, and it then took nearly 2 months for it to reopen again. The investigation into this horrible disaster obviously started immediately. South Korea's aviation and railroad accident investigation board, the ARIB took the lead with technical assistance from the US National Transportation Safety Board and Boeing. But interestingly, this initial group did not include anyone from the engine manufacturer CFM International. Within the first week, officials then confirmed that the aircraft had suffered a bird

3:50 strike during its final approach and also gave some more details on what had happened. Parts of birds containing feathers and tissue were recovered from both engines and was soon identified as Bol teal which is a migratory dock common to the region. And as part of the initial communication, the investigators also confirmed that both blackboxes, the cockpit voice and flight data recorder had stopped recording approximately 4 minutes before the accident after having lost all electrical power. This data loss therefore included the critical final approach, landing and impact. And without cockpit audio or detailed flight parameters from those final minutes, reconstructing the exact sequence of events has become significantly more difficult. Despite this limitation,

4:37 investigators have continued to analyze the physical evidence, radar data, and other available recordings. And as early as in late January of 2025, a preliminary report provided us with some more context, and it was quite bleak. The plane had no landing gear extended, no flaps or slats deployed, and a touchdown point well beyond the normal zone. Now, at that stage, the working theory still remained straightforward. A severe bird strike had triggered some kind of cascade of failures and I actually followed up on that report with a video about the systems involved which you can see here. Now as the months have progressed the precise narrative have begun to shift and that's what we are going to cover in

5:24 this video. By mid 2025 investigators had collected all of the evidence they could find. So they then began to dive into deeper system analysis with particular focus on the engines as well as the electrical and hydraulic systems. And it is this work that has now produced some of the most consequential developments in this case so far. In July, the ARIB prepared an interim technical update centered on what investigators had learned from the engines, cockpit control switches, and other parts recovered from the wreckage, as well as from the partial data available from the recorders before the power had been lost. Now, although the update was not formally released to the public, key points became known after

6:10 investigators briefed victims families as well as invited media to what was intended to be a technical session at Muan Airport. And the headline in this update was a real bombshell. The AR AIB allegedly told the families that the evidence that they had was consistent with the flight crew shutting down the left engine, which crucially at the time was the only engine still working well enough to provide some thrust. Wreckage analysis had shown that the left engine start lever at some point been moved to the off position, which then stopped fuel from flowing and shut the engine down. That information reportedly also matched the limited flight and cockpit voice data that was recovered before the power had been lost. Meanwhile, the right engine, which

6:57 seemed to have ingested more birds and showed sign of fire, was left to keep running. And it was also added that so far none of the recovered evidence pointed to a pre-existing failure that would have required shutting down the left engine. This meant that if the crew had shut down the wrong engine, the aircraft would have been left relying on the more badly damaged right engine for thrust, electrical generation, and hydraulics, which would explain several otherwise puzzling facts from the preliminary report. Namely, the loss of recorded data, the lack of flap and gear extension, and to some extent, also the high-speed long landing touchdown. Again, I went into more detail about those systems in my earlier video if

7:42 you're interested. Now, what's really important to understand here is that the investigators have not issued a final cautial determination, nor have they formally labeled this action as pilot error. Instead, this was only intended to be an update showing how the investigation was progressing. It is also important to point out that all of this information is at present unofficial since the investigators never released this update to the public. But given that the media was invited to the brief and that we have plentiful accounts from the families, it's pretty well substantiated. So this information may partially explain why the pilots landed the way they did. But the fact that the details are still incomplete means that others

8:28 in the industry are now asking new questions. What cockpit indications were available to the crew after the bird strike? Did electrical transient smoke or vibrations cause instrument loss or confusion? Were the standard engine failure identification procedures followed or interrupted? So far, we don't have any of the answers to those questions, but it was how the investigators communicated these interim findings that caused strong reactions from many sides. And that actually brings us to a really interesting point because how something is reported can create vastly different reactions. In this case, more than 60 different sources reported on this update and how it was perceived. And if you want to follow how we researched it, you can follow along with our sponsor Ground

9:13 News at ground.news/mentor. Now, here is a great example. The left-leaning CBC's headline put its emphasis on the possibility of critical pilot error, a phrase that I dislike by the way, as well as on the victims, whilst the right-leaning Toronto star frame the situation in a more emotional light, highlighting how the initial investigation has angered the families of the victims. So, these headlines both tell very different stories about the same facts, which is exactly the kind of contrast that ground news helps bring into focus. They also now have a custom mentor feed with all of the aviation, Boeing, and tech stories that I cover to help you stay in the loop. So, if you are tired of sensational headlines without context to only tell one side of

10:00 the story, I highly recommend you to check out Ground News. And if you use this QR code or go to ground.news/mentor, you'll get 40% off the same plan that I use for just $5 per month. But that is a short-term deal. So, hurry up and get it now. Thank you, Ground News, for supporting our coverage. Now, let's continue. When the families were briefed by the accident investigators ahead of the planned media release, a lot of them objected and voiced concern about how the update appeared to blame the crew without showing adequate supporting data. So, that session did not go well with the families even shouting and arguing with the investigators. It went so poorly in fact that it had to be cut

10:46 short. And that's also why the interim update had to be pulled back and was never publicly released. Soon after, other groups also started joining the families in their critique with South Korea's largest pilot associations very quickly starting to issue public statements of their own. Several organizations including the Korean Pilot Union Alliance and the JU Air Pilot Union accused the AIB of rushing to judgment and undermining the trust in the investigation. Now their core objection wasn't the evidence in itself. Instead, it was about the framing and the way that they felt that the investigators had built a narrative already. The interim findings, they argued, told only one part of the story. Yes, the physical evidence

11:33 suggested that the left engine had been shut down. That much seemed clear. But that fact on its own didn't explain why the crew had made that decision or whether they had enough information in the cockpit to correctly diagnose the situation in the first place. In a statement, the JU Air Pilot Union put a lot of emphasis on this point, questioning whether investigators had adequately considered the possibility of confusing indications, partial system failures, or even the presence of smoke in the flight deck. They noted that both engines had ingested birds, information which formed part of the preliminary report which was released months ago. And they also noted that it looked like the right engine remained operational all the way down to the landing. So without real-time data from the final

12:20 minutes of the flight, the union argued that the cause just couldn't be attributed to crew action alone. The union believes that the ARIB is asking the public to assume that the pilots simply shut down the wrong engine by mistake, but they believe the update didn't show us what indications the pilots had or whether those systems were functioning properly at all. The unions also criticized the ARIB's initial decision to release this partial update rather than to wait for the full analysis and they argued that doing so risk creating a public narrative of pilot error before the investigation was fully complete. Now I have to disagree with the unions here as I'm a strong believer in providing steady official updates during an investigation. As long as those

13:07 updates are clearly explained and objective in their nature, I think that they form a crucial barrier to more nefarious false information that gets pedled otherwise. But in this case, the National Pilot Alliance went even further and started calling for the raw cockpit audio and data from the black boxes to be released publicly, which would be a very rare move, and I'll come back to that shortly. More broadly, the pilot community expressed concerns that systemic factors were now being sidelined. In particular, they questioned why the interim findings made no mention of the broader context and mitigating factors that may have affected the crew's ability to make the best decisions and may have also affected how this accident sequence began in the first place.

13:53 The implication here was that the actions taken by the ARIB would go against the very intent of accident investigations by determining a narrative before all of the facts were taken in. Obviously, in aviation, investigations are not about designing blame. They're about understanding why and how something happened. The goal is to uncover the full chain of events from the initial trigger to the final outcome so that future accidents can be prevented. In order to do that, it is important to avoid building any narrative that could be interpreted as blame before all of the facts are available and understood in its full context. Otherwise, important details may be overlooked. Context may get flattened, and conclusions risk becoming incomplete,

14:39 misleading, or just plain wrong. If a crew decision is evaluated without understanding what information they had, what systems were available or what other pressures they were under, then the wrong lessons may be drawn from it. Uh this is a little bit complicated maybe. So let's give you an example which is not related to this accident. Let's say that a similar accident would happen where an aircraft suffers a bird strike to both engines and the pilots end up shutting down one of its engines that's producing the thrust. Now, if halfway down the investigation, a brief would come out saying only that the pilots ended up shutting down the engine producing thrust, well then everyone and their grandma would just say, "No, well,

15:25 the pilot screwed up. We need better training." But let's now say that 3 months later, the same investigation would come out and say that the running engine that was shut down by the crew had a fire warning on it and the malfunctioning one did not. Now that would completely change the picture, wouldn't it? But the problem is that at that time the media has likely already moved on and the opinion about the accident is already cemented. Also, if broader issues like airport infrastructure or organizational preparedness is being pushed to the side in favor of a single point of failure, well then the next incident might not be prevented at all. So the cost of a rushed conclusion isn't just accuracy,

16:10 it's also safety. So what broader issues and factors were brought up then which the unions and others felt were missing from this update? Well, first and foremost, this included the airport itself. Muan Airport has long been known for having an elevated bird strike risk. It's located near wetlands and migratory bird habitat. And even before this crash, it reportedly had the highest recorded bird strike rate among all South Korean airports. To add to this, it appears that at the time of the crash, the airport's wildlife control staffing was below the minimum standard required by regulation. The recommendation was for four employees and one only had one. On the day of the accident, a routine

16:57 bird caution advisory had been issued, but given that it was a for a, you know, transient event, that did not require the pilots to take any specific actions, only to be on the lookout for birds, which is very common. Now, a bird hazard warning was then transmitted to the crew just over a minute before the bird strike occurred, but it is unclear if that was just another routine warning or something more specific and also whether it gave the crew enough time to adjust their approach. But here I have to say that it feels a little bit like the unions are grasping a bit for straws because all pilots know that a bird warning are you know by their nature really fickle and that is never really clear whether or not the birds will affect you or your flight or not. So

17:44 it's ultimately always down to the crew to decide on how to interpret any type of warnings like this depending on how they judge and see the situation. But then there is the infrastructure. As I mentioned in the beginning, when flight 2216 overran the runway, it soon collided with a hardened concrete structure that house the airport's instrument landing systems localizer antenna. Now, there was some talk early on by speculators in the media that if Muan had been equipped with some kind of runway overrun artor, like an engineered materials arrest system, EMAs, then the 737 would have come to a stop at the end of the runway before hitting that structure. But those systems really only work on aircraft with their landing gear extended, where the system has something

18:30 to kind of grab onto. So in this case, the plane would have likely just slid over the top of that system with very little added deceleration. But most media and other commentators concentrated on that concrete localizer structure itself and its role in the crash. That structure was obviously not frangible, meaning that it was not designed to break away or collapse after an impact. Other localizer antenna structures, for example, consists of steel beams holding up each element of an antenna. And in most modern airport, fixed objects in the runway overrun zones are typically either breakaway structures or relocated entirely. Now, this one obviously wasn't, and when the aircraft struck it at high speed, the consequences was therefore instantly

19:16 fatal for most of the passengers and crew on board, but it is worth adding some more context to that. You see this localized structure sat at the end of a downward sloped area roughly 260 m beyond the runway threshold including a designated blast zone. Now the fact that the ground sloped down was a big part of why these concrete structure was as tall as it was because it needed to position those localizer antenna elements high enough so that they wouldn't be obstructed or interfered with by the sloping ground. Had the support for these antennas been made out of metal beams instead, it would probably have been difficult to make sure that they were rigid enough in high winds to give accurate ILS guidance

20:01 to landing aircraft. But making the antennas that way would just be one option. Another way might have been to cover the concrete wall with earth at a slope. But all of this is exactly the kind of information that a detailed report should cover. In any case, like I mentioned in my video, that distance of 260 m between the concrete structure and the end of the runway is actually more clear space than most airports provide. And while the embankment may have worsened the outcome, especially by increasing structural damage and the fire risk, it wasn't actually what caused this. You see, the aircraft touched down more than halfway down the runway and then barely decelerated at all. By the time it

20:46 overran, there was little chance of stopping regardless of what stood beyond the pavement. So, this structure could in another airport have been a house, a road, or something else. Anyway, for now, the ARIB has stepped back from publicly discussing these interim engine findings and officials have said that the information shared in July was only part of a broader ongoing investigation and that no final conclusions have been reached. But is the damage already done? There is now a sense that the trust in the process has been shaken across both the families and South Korea aviation community as a whole. And that is because while there is precedent for the Korean people not

21:33 to trust their government's ability to handle the aftermath of a major disaster. Many South Koreans still carry deep anger and grief over the handling of the MV Seol Fairy disaster back in 2014. That tragedy killed more than 300 people, most of them high school students. And this was widely seen as a national failure, not just of maritime safety, but crucially of accountability and transparency. The government's response at the time was heavily criticized for assigning blame before fully understanding what went wrong. And the scars from that are still quite fresh. So now there is a widespread demand that investigation must be thorough, credible, and free from political pressure. People want

22:20 real answers here, not a tidy conclusion. And above all, they want to know that something will change because of what has been learned. This means that a lot of pressure is now on the AIB to release a final report that the community believes is comprehensive, fair, and complete. And that final report is expected by mid 2026, 18 months after the crash, which is in line with the CA standards. That report is expected to address all of the outstanding questions like the role of the bird strike, the status of both engines, the loss of electrical power, and any decision-making breakdowns in the cockpit. But investigators will also be expected to examine how an airport with a known bird hazard ended up understaffed and underprepared. To do

23:06 that, the final report will need to be specific. Families of the victims have already said that they won't accept any conclusions unless they are backed up by detailed evidence and transparent reasoning. As I already said, many have also asked for the raw CVR and FDR data to be released, something that is almost never done due to privacy reasons because the families of flight crews just don't want the last words of their loved ones to be made public in that way. But here pilot unions and others are asking that at the very least the raw CVR audio is reviewed by independent expert because their concern is that without full transparency confidence in the process would erode further. Now I fully agree here because aviation

23:52 accidents are almost never about just pilot error or one single factor. Crews don't make bad decisions in a vacuum. They make decisions based on the information they have and by other factors that needs to be understood. Because when those decisions turn out to be wrong, the question should always be why didn't they have the right information? Was it because of system failures, inadequate training, poor human factors design, a lack of time, or too much conflicting input? We have had a number of high-profile aviation accidents in the past few months, which is understandably making the traveling public around the world very nervous, and that's why answering all of these questions thoroughly and convincingly is so important for everyone.

24:40 But what do you think? Please let me know about all of your thoughts in the comments below. And make sure to check out the deal that we have from Ground News if you want to have a more objective view of the news that you see. I also hope that you've noticed that we have started creating posters of your favorite airports in our merch store. So check it out and if you have a suggestion about an airport that is still not there, you can send us that suggestion from the store and we will let you know if and when it becomes available. My name is Peter Hornfeld and you're watching Mentor Now. Have an absolutely fantastic day and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.