Investigators Discover Pilots Allegedly Shut Off Airplane Engine By Mistake in Crash That Killed 179
- On December 29, 2024, a plane crash involving Jeju Air flight 7C2216 killed 179 people in South Korea.
- The plane, a Boeing 737-800 jet, crash-landed on its belly without landing gear at the Muan Airport
- According to local media reports, the victims' families are objecting to the preliminary report, which reportedly blames pilot error
Investigators looking to unravel the cause of the Jeju Air plane crash that happened in December 2024 have concluded their investigation.
The fatal plane crash involved a Jeju Air flight 7C2216, which crash-landed at Muan Airport with 181 people on board.
Source: UGC
Only two passengers survived after the plane landed on its belly, skidded off the end of the runway and erupted in fire as it hit an embankment. 179 people lost their lives.
More than six months after the plane crash, the South Korean Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board (ARAIB) is said to be ready to release a preliminary report on what caused it.
But according to local media in South Korea, the report was not made public as planned after the ARAIB faced criticism from victims' families who were briefed on its findings.
The air crash was attributed to a bird strike as remains of a duck were discovered.
The ARAIB briefed families on the report, and the body reportedly said it found the pilots of the airplane mistakenly shut down an engine.
It reportedly found that after the bird strike caused damage to the right engine, the pilot might have mistakenly shut down the still-functioning left engine while following emergency procedures, the Korean Times reports.
The outlets report that the decision to shut the still-functioning engine made the integrated drive generator (IDG), stop functioning.
The IDG is a critical component that generates and supplies electrical power to all of the plane’s systems. This may have led to the crash as other critical components such as landing gear failed to function.
However, Reuters reports that the victims' families picked holes in the report, making it clear that it was wrong to blame the dead pilots and ignoring other contributing factors that led to the crash.
Also, the Jeju Air pilots' union issued a statement criticising the report, which has not been officially made public, but whose findings were made known to victims' families.
The union said:
“We are outraged by ARAIB’s one-sided announcement and the unfiltered reporting of this announcement by the media, and we firmly reject the malicious framing that seeks to shift the blame onto the pilot."
Source: UGC
Lecturer of late pilot speaks
Earlier, Legit.ng reported that Professor Urvashi, who taught Clive Kunder, one of the pilots who died in the Air India crash, said the man was very disciplined and brilliant, among other great qualities.
In her words:
"Clive was very brilliant student, very disciplined, very punctual, intelligent... His work was very neat, clean, very systematic, said Ms Urvashi, who thinks his "disciplined nature made him a successful pilot".
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Proofreading by Funmilayo Aremu, copy editor at Legit.ng.
Source: Legit.ng
