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Why was there a wall near runway at S Korea plane crash airport?

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Re: Why was there a wall near runway at S Korea plane crash airport?

#161

Post by MoreMoore »

reso wrote: post #149

The wall is a red herring. The plane landed halfway down the runway at high speed. Something bad is going to happen if you do that at any runway on earth. In SFO you'll end up in the bay or hit the terminal depending on the orientation. In Toronto you'll crash into a highway. Stop looking at the wall and look at the minutes before the crash.

People keep saying that, but I don't see how it's excusable for there to be a massive concrete block against which planes disintegrate at the end of any runway. Maybe everybody would've died some other way, maybe only 10 people would have survived, who knows. But we won't know because somebody put a massive concrete block in the way.

We aren't talking about any of your examples in this crash. And it isn't relevant for many other places either. If you have an open field behind a runway and you put a concrete block directly at the end of it, you can't defend your decision with "well, in this other city it doesn't matter because you'll hit the terminal". It's some weird form of whataboutism that I simply don't understand.

It's inexcusable and it's tiring seeing people defend it as if it's okay.

Re: Why was there a wall near runway at S Korea plane crash airport?

#162

Post by bombcar »

iso8859-1 wrote: post #123
f1shy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were with gear down, the retracted it, as part of the go around…

We don't know that for sure yet. The gear being down is based on an eyewitness report, as far as I understand from Juan Browne. The readout from the flight data recorder will provide a more trustworthy account.

If I recall right the video that purportedly shows the bird strike shows the gear down.

Re: Why was there a wall near runway at S Korea plane crash airport?

#163

Post by boodleboodle »

neom wrote: post #99

My wife is South Korean (from andong). I asked her and she looked at me like I'd grown a second head "because it's South Korea? We're a young country and that is tiny airport in the south, half of Korea is a safety hazard and you know that fine well, some freaking idiot put a wall there, oh well, it's korea" and walked off pretty angry I'd even asked.

Safety hazards and disregard for accesibility as well

Re: Why was there a wall near runway at S Korea plane crash airport?

#164

Post by MoreMoore »

blueflow wrote: post #77

I'll recite an avherald comment: If you look at "Video of aircraft after touchdown sliding along the runway and impacting the fence:", you will find out that it took them ~1.7 sec from leaving the tarmac until they hit the construction. If you measure the distance on Google earth you come up with ~140m. That means they hit the construction with roughly 296km/h or 160 knots. If it wasn't the construction it would have…

So you'd rather them have a certain 100% chance of death instead of more leeway and a chance against much less robust trees? Honestly, if I crash land, I think I prefer 150 more meters and a tree as the obstacle over the concrete block.

What is going on here and what's with this crazy ass logic?

Re: Why was there a wall near runway at S Korea plane crash airport?

#165

Post by lmm »

loeg wrote: post #153
lmm wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ok but in an emergency all bets are off, the opposite direction is better than a crash landing. Sure, but so is a highway, or a river. Doesn't mean those should be built to runway standards.

Ok but this is a runway. It should be built to runway standards!

It's a runway in one direction only. It doesn't need to be built to the standards for a runway operating in the opposite direction, because it isn't.

Re: Why was there a wall near runway at S Korea plane crash airport?

#166

Post by ynniv »

bombcar wrote: post #151
ynniv wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the timeline I saw they were cleared before declaring an emergency. This means at the time of emergency the standard checklist required their gear had been locked and flaps set. Either they were not operating within regulation before they declared emergency, or they raised gear and retracted flaps below 900 AGL and decided to make an impossible turn instead of stabilizing their flight. I don't know what…

They had gear down, got a bird strike, did a go around, and retracted gear. At that point everything is fine and by the book but what happened next is the question - and why.

Either they would have actually "gone around" and executed the original approach (which would have been aborted when the gear didn't lock), or they had had mechanical problems and wouldn't have been able to make this 180º turn if they wanted to. There was ocean on three sides of them that would have provided a rough but survivable landing, as demonstrated a decade ago in New York.

At no point was this landing fine or by the book, and talking about ground obstructions is just a way to distract you.

Re: Why was there a wall near runway at S Korea plane crash airport?

#167

Post by kristjansson »

The graphic in the article is pretty misleading. The video of the accident shows the plane touching down with about a third of the runway left, not two thirds. All discussion of the localizer obstruction is secondary to (a) why did they touch so late and (b) why did they land so urgently.

Re: Why was there a wall near runway at S Korea plane crash airport?

#168

Post by SkyPuncher »

reso wrote: post #149

The wall is a red herring. The plane landed halfway down the runway at high speed. Something bad is going to happen if you do that at any runway on earth. In SFO you'll end up in the bay or hit the terminal depending on the orientation. In Toronto you'll crash into a highway. Stop looking at the wall and look at the minutes before the crash.

Most of the busiest airports in the world have some sort of dangerous obstacle roughly the same distance from many of their runways. Ravines, buildings, hills, water, trains/trams, etc, etc.

Re: Why was there a wall near runway at S Korea plane crash airport?

#169

Post by brookst »

dmurray wrote: post #134
pfannkuchen wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were those obstacles installed by the airport though? I thought it was like stuff on land outside of the airport for those other examples.

Does it matter? Either it's safe to have obstacles within 300m of the end of the runway, and this was a reasonable location for the Korean airport to put their localizer in, or it's not, and the likes of Burbank should shorten their runway to ensure there's sufficient buffer space at the end of it.

I’m suspicious of decontextualization in the name of forming “either X or Y” absolutes.

Either 8 character passwords are fine and secure, or bad and should be banned? With no context between “€x8;,O{w” and “password”?

I suspect runway design has more variables than just distance to obstacles.

Re: Why was there a wall near runway at S Korea plane crash airport?

#170

Post by loeg »

K0balt wrote: post #46
fl7305 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should ATC have done differently?

lol. People often have an idea that ATC actually controls what happens. They just give advisory guidance to pilots, who ultimately decide what to do. A clearance to land or the lack of one does not absolve the pilots from making their own judgments and decisions about how to conduct the navigation of the aircraft, and where and when to land. Usually, it’s a bad idea to not follow ATC guidance, but in the case of emer…

Yeah, especially given the mayday call, ATC is trying to give pilots the information they need, prepare emergency services, and get the fuck out of the way.
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