2024 marked a sorrowful year in aviation history. On January 2, 2024, Japan Airlines flight 516 collided with a smaller Japan Coast Guard plane at Haneda Airport in Tokyo. Flight 516 quickly burst into flames. Despite the critical situation of the incident, almost all crew members and passengers were evacuated, but 5 of the 6 crew members of the Japan Coast Guard plane lost their lives, and the pilot was severely injured.
Flight 516 departed from the city of Sapporo and landed shortly at Haneda Airport in Tokyo. The Japan Coast Guard plane was heading to Ishikawa for a rescue and relief operation following the deadly earthquake earlier that week. Prime Minister of Japan, Mr. Fumio Kishida, announced during a statement that all the necessary measures were being undertaken to ensure the deadly accident did not hinder the deliveries to Ishikawa.
The horrors of aviation incidents did not stop there. Months later, on May 19, a Bell 212 helicopter carrying Iran’s former president, Ibrahim Raisi, and foreign minister, Hossien Amir Abdullahian, crashed into the mountains in northwest Iran due to challenging climate and harsh weather. President Raisi was coming back from an inauguration for a joint dam project with Azerbaijan. Search and rescue teams were deployed at the scene but soon came across the hostilities of the area. The thick fog also prevented the teams from spotting the blazing flames of the helicopter wreck as all aerial surveillance via helicopter was called off. Joint rescue aerial surveillance operations using drone technology with Turkey were undertaken to spot the remains of the helicopter. After a full day of rescue operation, the team stumbled upon a soul-crushing scene: all passengers on board, including the president, had lost their lives upon impact except the Imam of Tabriz, who reportedly stayed in contact via phone for several hours after the helicopter disappeared from the radar.
Heads of state were still targeted by deadly crashes. Weeks later, on June 10, Malawi’s vice president, Saulos Chilima, was in a plane crash, and all the 9 passengers died on impact. Hundreds of soldiers and police officers started searching for the wreckage and found it 24 hours later in a forest south of Mzuzu.
On December 25, 2024, an Azerbaijan Airlines flight crashed in Kazakhstan, killing 38 people. Flight 8243 was en route from Baku to Grozny in the Caucasus when it suddenly diverted and flew for hundreds of kilometres across the Caspian Sea and crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan. Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, alleged that Russia shot down the plane above its territory with fire from the ground. Russian president Vladimir Putin apologised for the tragic incident that happened but did not mention anything about Russia’s involvement in the incident. The Embraer 190 was a Brazilian-made aeroplane. After recovering the black box, aviation experts from Brazil, Russia, and Azerbaijan gathered in Brasilia at the Centre for Investigation and Prevention of Air Accidents to uncover the truth about the incident. Brazil’s air force did not publish any deadline for the investigations.
The year was concluded with its deadliest crash in South Korea, where Jeju flight 2216 overran the runway, killing 179 of the 181 occupants on board. The flight was carrying the passengers from Thailand to South Korea when it called for a mayday and attempted a belly landing, ultimately crashing into the concrete barrier at the end of the runway, killing all of the passengers and leaving behind two crew members.The crash was the second deadliest plane crash in South Korea’s history after the Guam plane crash in 1997.
Minutes before landing, the pilots alerted the control tower about a bird strike. The plane attempted an emergency landing without its landing gear, travelling down the runway and slamming into the barrier.
After recovering the black boxes, authorities started doing their investigations. The decoding can take up to several months, considering that one of the boxes was damaged. Authorities and experts have also started investigating the factors contributing toward the incident as well as why the flaps were raised during the crash landing. Authorities also carried out a search and seizure protocol at Muan airport, where the plane crashed, as well as Jeju Air’s office in Seoul. Jeju Air CEO was also banned from leaving the country to avoid any impediment in the investigation process.
Experts have raised questions about the real cause of the incident, saying that a bird strike might have only damaged the engines and is not a convincing reason to prove the malfunction of the landing gears.
Australian aviation expert, Professor Ron Bartsch, has told the Today Show that many questions remain unanswered.”I suspect that the initial reports that have indicated that bird strike or weather may have been a contributing factor, but to me, that’s pretty unlikely that a bird strike alone would be sufficient to bring down an aircraft or to foresee landing gear not to be able to be operative,” he added.
According to some experts, if the barrier was not made out of solid concrete, the crash may have been less deadly.
Muan airport has been a scene of grief and mourning since the incident; stairs were covered with notes from people who lost their loved ones during the crash. Authorities have also released most of the bodies after identifying them at the airport through DNA tests to the families to prepare them for the funeral.
South Korea has started the inception of all Boeing 737-800 planes to determine whether their landing gears suffer from the same technical malnutrition or not.
World leaders, including the current president of the United States, alongside the first lady and the president of Germany, expressed their deepest condolences to the families of the victims.
Written by Mohammad Amin
