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Comment by lawgimenez | Hacker News Reader

> The plane appears to have hit a concrete wall, according to the photos.

Can anybody point out why there is a concrete wall at the end of the runway?

There isn’t one. There is a dip, and then a marshy area, and then there is a soil berm that supports the runway lighting system which is at the same height as the runway surface.

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1108904845802471515...

I’d like to know if his runway had an EMAS system, and if EMAS is effective against an aircraft without the landing gear down. In satellite photos, both ends of the runway are marked with yellow chevrons, which indicates that the surface is not supposed to be taxiied on, and it has a blocky/pixelated coloring which is typical of EMAS but I cant find an airport facility directory that covers MXW.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_materials_arrestor_...

FYI the Discord image link will expire after a few hours. If you could link the original source or reupload the image onto another image host such as Imgur, that'd be nice for people reading the thread later

So let it be written, so let it be done. Sorry, too late to edit my original post, and the original was a webp that imgur won’t take so I had to screenshot it.

https://imgur.com/a/nu3wSZJ

Runway info: [1]. No mention of EMAS. There are chevrons at each end, but EMAS markings are not yet standardized internationally, which ops.group complains about.

At that speed, with gear up, and possibly still under power, EMAS might not help much. Unclear from the video.

Expect more solid info tomorrow.

[1] http://aim.koca.go.kr/eaipPub/Package/2015-01-07-AIRAC/html/...

All media seems to say that it is indeed made of concrete. Perhaps covered in soil?

By looking at the streetview image [1], and assuming this is the correct concrete wall they hit, my best guess is that this is just the "fencing" around the airport. Letting an airplane run past the wall would have meant allowing an airplane to cross a few streets past the end of the runway.

It would be nice to know what are the regulations around this topic though, having a concrete wall at the end of a runway can definitely be fatal (as we've seen here)

[1]: https://maps.app.goo.gl/yFx9u1AE1kZhM9iW8

Seems like a matter of “fatal for the airplane passengers” vs. “fatal for the airplane passengers plus motorists”

Could be worse. There was an accident in Brazil a while ago in which a runaway plane almost hit a gas station.

This happened in Argentina: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAPA_Flight_3142

It looks like a trolley problem to me sadly. If that wall wasn't there, the plane would have kept skidding (from the looks of that picture) downhill into traffic for who knows how long. Planes have a lot of inertia. And those look like power lines just past that wall too; those would not help the situation either.

I was curious so I went and looked at what other airports do, yyz, jfk, icn, lhr are all chainlink, some areas of yyz if you over-ran and went through he chainlink, it looks like surely you'd be on a road considerably bigger than the one at Muan.

Here’s a better streetview link. You can see the dirt berm that the aircraft hit is located far inside the perimeter wall. Also the wall is pretty dang thin and would not have stopped a 737 like that.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/NHh9eDtAGGtZY9fH7

New pics in the media seem to show most of the wreckage came to a stop between the dirt berm and the perimeter concrete wall. At least one of the engines looks like it reached and penetrated the wall.

If the video we all are seeing is from this accident, then it is not the fencing around the airport. It is some kind of mound, apparently hardened earth with antennas from the instrument landing system on it ( the fence seems to be further back ).

Because it's the start of the runway, not the end.

Better for planes to hit a concrete wall than take out a neighborhood downstream from the runway.

Unfotunately the neighbourhood downstream from the runway is a field followed closely by a body of water.

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