Experts Alarmed by Huge Wall at Airport That Jet Crashed Into, Killing 179 Passengers
“Normally, on an airport with a runway at the end, you don’t have a wall.” Localizer Tragedy In South Korea, a jet quite literally crashed and burned when it hit a wall that was placed at the end of an airport runway, killing 179 passengers. As the BBC reports, the pilot of the Jeju Air plane reported to the control tower at Muan International Airport that the Boeing 787-800 jet had struck a bird and needed to make an emergency landing. Despite failing to deploy its wheels and other gear, the emergency landing was looking okay — until the plane crashed into the concrete structure atop a dirt embankment at the end of the runway. That wall held a navigational system called a localizer that’s meant, ironically, to help planes land safely. While localizer structures are common at airports, they’re generally not supposed to be placed at the end of runways like the one at Muan, experts told the BBC. Air safety specialist David Learmont told the broadcaster that if the “obstruction,” as he called the localizer …