The tragic incident involving Jeju Air Flight 2216 has left 179 of the 181 individuals aboard confirmed dead as of Sunday, December 29.
The precise cause of the crash is still being investigated, but airport footage reveals the aircraft skidding without its landing gear deployed before it struck a wall and ignited.
David Learmount, an aviation expert and the operations and safety editor at Flight International magazine, believes a higher survival rate could have been achieved with a single alteration.
In an interview with Sky News, he criticized the concrete barrier at the runway’s end. Social media videos depict the plane sliding down the runway, still largely intact.
The aircraft then erupts into flames upon crashing into the wall.
He stated: “Not only is there no justification [for the wall to be there], I think it’s verging on criminal to have it there.
“That kind of structure should not be there. That is awful. That is unbelievably awful.
“He [the pilot] has brought it down beautifully given the circumstances, they are going very fast but the plane is still intact as it slides along the ground.”
The concrete structure at the South Korean airport was designed as a guidance system at the runway’s end, intended to assist pilots in poor visibility or night landings.
Nonetheless, Learmount noted he hasn’t encountered a similar setup at other airports. Questions have arisen about the wall’s role in the crash.
The expert proposed that if the Boeing 737-800 hadn’t collided with the wall, it might have broken through a perimeter fence and crossed a road, eventually stopping in a nearby field.
He continued: “To have a hard object about 200m or less into the overrun, I’ve never seen anything like this anywhere ever before.
“There was plenty of space for the aircraft to have slowed down, come to a halt.
“And I think everybody would have been alive…the pilots might have suffered some damage going through the security fence or something like that.
“But I even suspect they might have survived.”