Jeju Air Disaster Prompts a Reckoning Over Runway Safety

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After a skim overshot a runway in due south dae-han-min-gook, cleanup 179 people, a Times analysis found that global standards that help minimize fatalities are inconsistently followed.

By River Akira DavisSelam Gebrekidan and Grace Moon

River Akira Davis reported from Tokyo, Selam Gebrekidan from Hong Kong and Grace Moon from Seoul.

Jeju Air Flight 2216 did not have to end in such a catastrophe.

Early on Dec. 29, a clear Sunday morning, the Boeing 737-800 made an emergency landing on its belly at South Korea’s Muan International Airport. The aircraft skidded past the end of the runway, smashed into a concrete structure and burst into flames. Of the 181 passengers and crew members aboard, 179 were killed.

Runway excursions — when an aircraft overruns or veers off the runway during landing or takeoff — have for years been among the most common type of aviation accident. But in the vast majority of cases, the planes come safely to a stop, saved in part by zones around runways that are supposed to contain only structures that are frangible, meaning designed to break easily upon impact.

The New York Times analyzed information on more than 500 runway excursions and found that 41 resulted in deaths. In 2010, 158 people died when a flight in India overran the runway and fell into a gorge. But no other runway excursion has come close to the death toll at Muan airport, according to the data, which was compiled by the nonprofit Flight Safety Foundation.

Accidents in which planes hit breakable structures at the end of runways have tended not to be deadly:

Damaged antenna

structure

Damaged antenna

structure

Damaged antenna

structure

Damaged antenna

Damaged antenna

Damaged antenna

Path of plane

Path of plane

Path of plane

Part of destroyed plane

Concrete structure

Part of destroyed plane

Concrete structure

Part of destroyed plane

Concrete structure

In October 2022, a Korean Air plane skidded off a runway in the Philippines amid heavy rain and collided with a metal structure.

The structure, a mount for an antenna array used to help planes land, broke apart upon impact. All 173 passengers and crew members survived.

In November 2018, a cargo plane also overshot the runway and crashed into a similar antenna mount in Halifax, Canada.

The structure fell apart, and everyone on board survived.

The Jeju Air flight in Muan met a different fate.

In Muan, the antenna array mount was made of concrete, reinforced with steel beams.

Sources: Alan Tangcawan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images;Transportation Safety Board Of Canada; Video by Lee Geun-young

By Agnes Chang

The story behind why a steel-reinforced concrete structure stood so close to a runway illustrates a longstanding vulnerability in global air transport. A United Nations aviation safety agency issues recommendations to keep the area near airport runways clear of obstacles. But it is up to national regulators and private companies that manage airports to interpret, implement and oversee compliance of those standards.

Inquiries by The Times to airport regulators in more than two dozen countries revealed inconsistencies in how they interpret the standards issued by the U.N. Agency, the International Civil Aviation Organization.

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