At the end of last month, a Jeju Air flight in Korea experienced an accident, resulting in the death of 179 people. Video experts analyzed footage from before the crash and discovered that just before the tragic event, the aircraft may have collided with a flock of birds ten times larger than the aircraft itself, causing both engines to fail and the landing gear to be unable to deploy, ultimately leading to the tragedy.
On the morning of December 29 at 8:57 am, the Muan Airport control tower issued a bird strike warning to flight 7C2216, and about two minutes later, the pilot attempted to land for the first time but encountered a bird strike, immediately calling out the "MAYDAY" distress signal three times and trying to go around. However, during the second attempt to land, the aircraft belly-landed, lost control, ran off the runway, and crashed into the cement base of the Instrument Landing System beacon, exploding on the spot.
According to an exclusive report by Korean TV station SBS, surveillance footage before the accident was released on the 4th, where artificial intelligence enhanced the image quality more than fivefold, and a video analysis expert was consulted. The results showed that just before the aircraft crashed, there was a suspected collision with a flock of birds larger than the aircraft itself.
From the footage, a large black cloud-like object can be seen appearing near the aircraft before the accident.
Hwang Min-koo, head of the Forensic Video Analysis Institute, believes that the large black shadow in the video is unlikely to be a cloud or smoke because it can be seen flying in the air and continuously changing shape. It is highly likely to be a flock of birds.
Hwang Min-koo explained that from an imaging perspective, a few birds are insufficient to form a dense black mass in the footage unless the number of birds is significant. It can be determined that it was a large flock of birds, with a scale even larger than the aircraft itself, and at the time, at least hundreds of birds were flying towards the aircraft simultaneously.
Based on speculation, after the aircraft was struck by birds, it is suspected that both engines failed, indicating that it was not just one or two birds being sucked into the engines but a portion of the bird flock, leading to significant damage to the aircraft engines.