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Comment by ajb | Hacker News Reader

Discussion on prune (professional pilots rumour network): https://www.pprune.org/accidents-close-calls/663324-jeju-737...

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Interesting that everyone in the prune thread thinks bird strike is not the likely cause, but something else

Doesn’t seem to be unanimous - reading through, one working hypothesis is that the pilots were incapacitated or killed by bird strike - not impossible - and someone else was attempting landing.

Maybe I’m missing something - how would pilots sitting inside the plane be incapacitated by birds on the outside

Planes fly very fast

Commercial airliner windows are chemically strengthened and designed to withstand bird strikes, but it’s not impossible if you’re really unlucky.

See here for another plane with weaker glass: https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/12iqve4/...

Ah thanks. But even then, there’s two pilots for redundancy, so it would take an extreme event that both pilots got knocked out..?

It won’t be this. People on that forum talk about hitting many more birds at much higher speeds with much less issues. The landing gear should have been deployed before the strike too? Happened at 200 meters I believe?

That was a light aircraft with a very different windscreen. The ones in airliners are very tough.

Someone not familiar with the front windshield of cars might think they go straight through. Don't think airplanes have any less strong windshields than cars.

A deep-frozen bird hitting the windshield straight on might be a problem but a live bird hitting at less than 45 degrees is not a problem for the plane or the pilots. The bird becomes red mist.

Depends on the size of the bird.

They can definitely go through plane windshields.

https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-f40a81ebb9201ba52c7e3...

I don't think you can directly compare the windshields on a plane like that with a 737NG.

Extremely unlikely considering the speed of the aircraft at the time of bird impact, and the fact the cockpit door is locked & it would take some time from others to enter it.

To me this seems more like pilots mishandling the situation after an engine failure caused by bird strike...

The previous worst Korean air disaster was mostly caused by crew communication failures. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_801

I'll add that I'm not saying that is a factor in this at all - the accident report will do that in time.

This is from more than 25 years ago, there has been big changes since then.

I'm glad to hear there have been big changes. However, there is a more recent accident associated with a Korean operator: Asiana flight 214 crash at SFO in 2013.

The NTSB identified poor crew communication and crew resource management as important factors. Reuters and AFP reported negative repetitional impact to Korean air carriers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214

They seemed perfectly lined up with the runway and descended at the right pace though. That’d be real tough for a non-pilot to achieve.

There are auto-landing systems now.

There was a video of a layman in a pilot seat (in a professional simulator) guided over radio landing plane with just few simple actions.

Here, found it - https://old.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1dhi0...

In every airliner model?

Yes, of course. Even in paper ones.

Then they’d have lost comms with the ATC which would have been mentioned by now surely? With two pilots incapacitated in a go-around procedure?

Sure but that needs to be set up and configured. I just don’t think there’s enough time in the scenario for ATC to guide a non-pilot to do it. And if they got that guidance, why no flaps and gears? I am quite convinced the pilots themselves had control of the aircraft.

"Top Answer" as of right now seems to say they were trying to go around but failed and tried to get out again, but "probably" with one engine because of "bird ingestion".

The speculation in this answer also seems plausible:

https://www.pprune.org/accidents-close-calls/663324-jeju-737...

IANAP but from what I know a plane can theoretically fly on one engine.

Basically every commercial aircraft are required to at least be able to fly straight and level on one engine. The 737 NG can climb perfectly fine on a single engine, especially since this one was at the destination and would have burned off most of the fuel.

> Basically every commercial aircraft are required to at least be able to fly straight and level on one engine.

Very nitpicky but I have to say it:

The requirement is „one engine out“, not „one engine available“.

This makes a significant difference when looking at planes with more than 2 engines, like a 747 or an A380. Those have to be flyable with 3 engines remaining (which gives them an advantage because 2 engine planes have to calculate takeoff with 1/2 engine performance while 4 engine planes can assume 3/4 engine performance).

The article itself says the landing gear wasn't deployed.

> Yonhap reported that the landing gear of the Boeing Co. 737-800 jet malfunctioned, causing it to land on its belly without its wheels deployed. It then hit a wall at the end of the runway.

From all the speculation about birds I'm guessing the article was updated with this after many of these comments.

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