Investigation into South Korea’s Jeju Air crash hints at pilot error, angering families

FILE - Rescue team members work at the site of a plane crash at Muan International Airport in Muan, South Korea on Dec. 31, 2024. Photo by Ahn Young-joon /AP

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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The initial results of an investigation into December’s devastating Jeju Air crash in South Korea showed that, while the plane’s both engines sustained bird strikes, its pilots turned off the less-damaged one just before its crash-landing. The finding, which implied human errors, drew quick, vehement protests from bereaved families and fellow pilots who accuse authorities of trying to shift responsibility for the disaster to the dead pilots.

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South Korea’s Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board initially planned to publicize the results of an investigation of the plane’s engines on Saturday. But it was forced to cancel its press briefing in the face of strong protests by relatives of crash victims who were informed of the findings earlier in the day, according to government officials and bereaved families.

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“If they want to say their investigation was done in a reliable, independent manner, they should have come up with evidence that backs up their explanation,” said Kim Yu-jin, head of an association of bereaved families. “None of us resent the pilots.”

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The Boeing 737-800 operated by Jeju Air landed on its belly without its land gear deployed at South Korea’s southern Muan International Airport on Dec. 29. It overshoot a runaway, slammed into a concrete structure and burst into flames. It was the deadliest disaster in South Korea’s aviation history in decades, killing all but two of the 181 people on board.

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Investigation signals pilots turned off a wrong engine

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According to a copy of an unpublished briefing report obtained by The Associated Press, a South Korean-led multilateral investigation team said it found no defects in the plane’s engines built by France’s Safran and GE.

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The report said thorough examinations of the engines found the plane’s right engine suffered more serious internal damage following bird strikes as it was engulfed with big fires and black smoke. But the pilots switched off the plane’s left engine, the report said citing probes on the cockpit voice recorder, the flight data recorder and the engines examinations.

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Officials earlier said the black boxes of the Boeing jetliner stopped recording about four minutes before the accident, complicating investigations into the cause of the disaster. The cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder cited in the briefing report refers to data stored before the recording stopped.

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The report didn’t say why the pilots shut off the less-damaged engine and stopped short of saying whether it was an error by the pilots.

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Bereaved families, fellow pilots slam the probe

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Bereaved families and pilots at Jeju Air and other airlines lambasted the investigation findings, saying authorities must disclose the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder.

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“We, the 6,500 pilots at civilian airlines, can’t contain our seething anger against the preposterous argument by the Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board that lost neutrality,” the Korean Pilot Unions Alliance said in a statement Tuesday.