The tragic South Korean plane crash has ignited more than a few theories about its cause with some raising doubts of a bird strike.

With eyewitness accounts and reports emerging on the crash that killed 179 people near Muan International Airport in Jeollanam-do, South Korea, some have questioned the investigation of an alleged landing gear failure due to a potential bird strike.

“There are a million backups on this airplane. It’s extremely safe, and that’s what a lot of people are saying. They can’t understand why this airplane was landed on that runway at that speed with no flaps, with no gear. There might have been something else involved,” Mike Boyd, an aviation consultant, told Fox News Sunday.

(Video Credit: Fox News)

“A bird strike on an engine might shut an engine down, but there’s so many redundant systems there, it just doesn’t make sense. We’re not in the dark, but we know the runway is 9,200 feet. It’s a very long runway. It [the plane] did come in hot and high, hot and fast. We don’t know why that was the real issue,” he added.

“That airplane was probably damaged more than we think, and it may not have been just the bird strike,” Boyd said. “There might have been other things that happened to that airplane. We don’t know, but it’s very strange to have that airplane land that hot on a runway where it literally was still going pretty strong when they hit that wall.”

Only two out of 181 onboard the Jeju Air flight survived after the plane skidded down the runway and crashed into a concrete barrier, exploding on impact. The 15-year-old Boeing 737-800 jet did not have its landing gear deployed as video of the doomed plane showed.

“The gear is not extended. The flaps are not extended, which would indicate that there was a major hydraulic failure of some kind there,” Boyd noted.

“Even when there’s a hydraulic failure, there’s a mechanical way of dropping the landing gear. That was not done. I think we’re going to be kind of in the dark here ’til we find the cockpit voice recorder and the black box for this because it looks like there was a bird strike from some earlier picture of it,” he continued.

“They did vector the airplane around to the other end of the runway, so there was control but landing at this speed or coming down at that speed with the gear not down, it looks like that airplane suffered some major hydraulic failure of some kind,” he contended.

The editor of Airline News, Geoffrey Thomas, told Reuters he was doubtful a bird strike would have caused the crash.

“A bird strike is not unusual. Problems with an undercarriage are not unusual. Bird strikes happen far more often, but typically they don’t cause the loss of an airplane by themselves,” he said.

Boeing issued a statement after the tragic crash.

pic.twitter.com/TIrIUBw4RB

— The Boeing Company (@Boeing) December 29, 2024

“We extend our deepest condolences to the families who lost loved ones, and our thoughts remain with the passengers and crew,” Boeing said in a statement, adding that it has been in contact with Jeju Air  and is “ready to support them.”

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Frieda Powers

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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida where she has been writing for the BizPacReview team since 2015.

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