"The captain of the accident declares a 'disaster signal' after warning of a bird collision."

■ Host: Anchor Park Seok-won, anchor Yoo Da-hyun
■ Starring: Baek Seung-joo, professor of fire prevention and prevention at Korea Open Cyber University

* The text below may differ from the actual broadcast content, so please check the broadcast for more accurate information. Please specify [YTN Newswide] when quoting.

[Anchor]
Let's go into more detail with Baek Seung-joo, a professor of fire prevention and safety at Korea Open Cyber University. Please come in. We keep sending Mayday signals and sending and receiving messages with the control tower. It says that a Mayday signal was sent a minute later and a collision occurred. Is there a reason why the situation turned urgently?

[Baek Seungju]
That's my guess. Although expectations cannot be foreseen, given the various scenarios, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport has changed the time little by little at the briefing after 3 o'clock and 5 o'clock, but this is not intentional, but it seems that there was confusion because it was organized only with information set at the site. However, at first, it was expressed as an alarm that there was a possibility of a collision because the tide was moving in that area, but since this alarm could be misunderstood as an official stage, I changed the story to advice. So, when the advisory warning was delivered that there is a high possibility of collision due to the sudden movement of the tide, not a formal procedure, the aircraft has not been officially announced, but if you look at the report video on the screen, there is a report video of smoke soot floating in the sky. I can hear the sound. That's why there must have been a bird collision or an engine accident similar to this in a stage that advised a bird collision, and thereafter. But in that regard, it is related to what the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said at the 5 o'clock briefing. Regardless of whether it is a tidal current collision or not, it is said that there is no interlocking failure in situations where the engine and landing gear are not unfolded. That's definitely true. So, during the landing process, the device and the engine device are not defective. Another issue in that regard is that it attempted an emergency landing, and there was a fuselage landing accident at Daegu Airport in 1991. There's a little homage, but the captain and the assistant manager make a mistake about landing gear in a simple part and try to land as it is. In addition, there is a case where the landing gear was not lowered at the control center and then the flight number was given, so it landed in the fuselage with the landing gear that was not broken as it was. But then there was a circuit brake circuit that sounded the alarm system when the landing gear was not unfolded, and by blocking this circuit brake, it made a fuselage landing without listening to the alarm. But the reason why I'm suddenly telling you this is because in the current situation, if it's clear that the landing gear is broken enough to judge the fuselage landing, there are two safety devices before that. One is a device that lowers manually. Even if it is a model without manual, it has a safety device that automatically and automatically doubles by electricity. That's why I'm increasing the probability. And there is a procedure to check whether the landing gear is spread or not at the control center. But those two things may have been overlooked, and they tried to land right away for only two minutes that they could not take action. In that sense, if you look at a single scenario, there is a warning of a bird collision, and if you intentionally turn off the emergency warning system or ignore it, if you misjudge that an unknown landing gear has come down after that, or if you got off and didn't get off, the airport cannot take emergency measures for a fuselage landing. So this includes a few assumptions. The process continues until this point, which is only three minutes at the 3 o'clock briefing and only six minutes at the 5 o'clock briefing. So, at first, I gave advice on the possibility of a bird collision, a Mayday warning went in, and a collision accident. Because it's a short time, it's a very short time to say that two breakdowns or intentional judgments have been made in the control center and the cockpit. So I think we can also see a scenario where we infer like that.

[Anchor]
It was a very short time to make that judgment, but wasn't it the last option anyway that the pilot decided to land the fuselage at that moment?

[Baek Seungju]
That's right. The fuselage landing is literally a very dangerous situation in terms of how to land. And if the engine is broken, it is also difficult to take off again. Therefore, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport is also delaying the announcement that both sides are completely broken. So of course it will. Currently, data collection has not been completed, so they said they collected flight recorders and black boxes of voice records, but it is not official that this can be analyzed only when the various devices inside it are combined, but to what extent they shared it when it was inevitable, and Muan Airport is currently at the level of an international airport and is equipped with a self-defense fire brigade. In such a situation, if the runway becomes long, there are three places. So for the first time. The middle, the end. In particular, because the end is dangerous, there is a part at the end that focuses on the rescue firepower. But while landing in the north direction, it changed 180 degrees in the south direction again. Changing the direction of the same runway should have changed the response of the fire brigade in an instant. We didn't have that physical time. So, in that part, it seems right to see that there may be thoughts that are not shared with each other.

[Anchor]
So, if you look at the briefing by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport now, if you have established a system that can be urgently dispatched in the event of an accident within two to three minutes, doesn't it mean that there was a system that could be urgently dispatched after the May Day declaration? Do you think the emergency system didn't work?

[Baek Seungju]
For example, the Mayday situation requires professional judgment in various situations, but a fuselage landing becomes very dangerous without wheels at all. A situation in which a parallel plane descends downhill from a high state is relatively less dangerous than a fuselage landing when one engine fails. Therefore, the fact that the captain's Mayday came out four minutes before the crash is a distress signal asking for rescue, so what measures are taken? So, it comes out when you can't stably do various situations such as turning back or raising the altitude again. Therefore, if you understand that the landing gear is not unfolded at this moment, you can do that. So this part is also... So right now, if you try to find something too clear, it becomes a prediction and there may be misunderstandings between each other, so there are some parts that are cautious, but there are parts that are clearly not sympathetic. This seems to be clear.

[Anchor]
I'll have to analyze it to find out, but first of all, all three landing gears didn't come out.

[Baek Seungju]
That's right. Since there is a video report now, the official position said that the landing gear failure should be examined. However, if you look at the video, whether it hasn't been manipulated or it's broken, the model has wheels in the middle of the front. And since there are two body parts on both sides toward the rear wing, there is clearly no front wheel even if you can't see the rear wheel due to white dust and smoke coming from the engine in the landing report video. That's why it didn't come down. And this model is a model in which the rear wheel folds sideways and lies down like this, and there is no cover. However, even if you look at other normal landing videos, if you look at it now, the engine attached under the wing is mainly touching the floor. If the rear wheel is unfolded, it is about the height of floating. So you can't clearly see the position of the rear wheel, but from the height of the fuselage's wings, it doesn't seem that the rear wheel is also unfurled, and even if it isn't, it's certainly a major obstacle, artificial, environmental, or physical. [Anchor] At the briefing of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, the wind direction was about 110 and the wind speed was about 2 knots. This is a weather situation where there are no restrictions on the operation of the runway and the operation of the aircraft, right?

[Baek Seungju]
That's right. That's how I see it. It rose like this at the beginning of the fire and later exploded, but even in the form of flame smoke, it is going upward in the vertical direction. So, even if the wind blows more than 5m, it will disperse and become in one direction. It is not a very dangerous condition even on the coast, but it is not a big problem because there may be set waves or gusts locally.

[Anchor]
We've been talking about the possibility of a bird collision, so shouldn't we look at various possibilities? What other possibilities do you see?

[Baek Seungju]
There is also a report that passengers have text messages saying that there may be multiple causes, that a bird simply hit the engine with just a bird collision. So, in fact, these things have not been confirmed by the captain's announcement, but passengers can find out through such things. The specific situation of the bird being caught interrupted may have been inferred, but if it was through the announcement, it seems right to say that there was a bird collision. And one informant said that he witnessed an aircraft with soot smoke coming out and that he saw an aircraft in a runway when he moved to his car because he was nearby. So there was a lot of time in the meantime. Therefore, it is simply a damage caused by a tidal current collision on one side of the engine. However, it may be a big cause in the area that it led to the unconditional landing of the fuselage and such accidents, but it may not be a cause, I think I can see some of the messages that come out.

[Anchor]
It may be difficult to say that this accident can occur only by a tidal current collision, so shouldn't we eventually look at the defects in the gas?

[Baek Seungju]
In addition, I think there are some elements of material and human connection. What I mean is that when a building has a fire, it is very difficult to catch fire in two places at the same time. That's why they say it's a singles list. Unless it is a high-level terrorist attack, it is very difficult for both disasters to occur at the same time. That's not to say you see it as terrorism. So this is a situation where the landing gear is not unfolded. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport spoke at a briefing. Regardless of the situation where the landing gear is not unfolded and the smoke-filled tidal current collision on the engine side, there is no process of failure that works when the engine side fails. This is a physical situation. So, for example, there are some systematic, communication, and human errors between the smoke-filled engine failure that happened before that and the process of not spreading the landing gear after that. Without instrumental errors, human and environmental errors can lead to the next accident.You can also judge it. So, in the event of a fire, a fall can lead to a death accident. Fire and fall do not have a direct causal relationship, but because of the extreme circumstances of the evacuation caused by the fire, the fall can be judged. So there are definitely human and environmental influences, so in various accidents, rather than deciding on one scenario and collecting data, it's absolutely impossible. We have to go through the process of setting up all the scenarios and erasing the impossible one by one. That's why it seems like there may be enough links to such human error.

[Anchor]
It is said that parts of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport's failure to properly prevent fire landing have been identified. What are the prevention measures for fuselage landing fire? [Baek Seung-joo] First of all, the activities of the ground response team are very important in contacting the airport and the environment closely with each other in the cockpit and the control center. There is a rescue and emergency system on the ground, and for now, the fire brigade is at the level of an international airport, so flames and frictional heat are generated because the fuselage must now hit the runway and stand through friction. But the aircraft is filling the wing body with aircraft oil and oil. In that situation, it must lead to an explosion. . . It almost leads to a high probability, so we put chemical foam on the runway in advance. If the fire brigade can within 3 minutes, gather the rescue fire at the end. In that sense, the response cannot be achieved in two to three minutes. So, it is only two to three minutes to start moving quickly, but it is a common process for an airplane that has completed a round flight to make a fuselage landing after going through this process of measures. However, in this part, there was no time for the fire brigade to physically respond because it was only six minutes from warning of a bird collision before it even hit the tide. In other words, did the judgment of the landing of the fuselage really sympathize with the fire brigade? Did you try after the action was completed? Questions arise about this part.

[Anchor]
And in the previous briefing, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said that the length of the runway is difficult to see as the cause of the accident, and the line was drawn like this. However, some say that if the runway was long, it could have been stopped due to friction with the ground before the plane crashed into the wall. How do I look at this?

[Baek Seungju]
It would be wrong to say that there is no problem with the relatively short runway. Then, it is said that there is no need to build a long runway. It's true that short runways are dangerous and bumping into each other, but it's a runway that has been verified in various situations, not to the extent that it restricts certain operations, and that we don't get on board. But if this is the case in this sad accident right now, how can you not wish it was like that? In that accident, if there was definitely a flatland in the back and there was no fence, I would have thought that I could have gone and stood. So, you might think that this has nothing to do with institutional or affirmative things, but officially. I also regret what it would have been like if it had been a little long.

[Anchor]
It was such a big accident, so there is no choice but to be disappointed. In the case of commercial airliners, don't you think it's necessary to investigate what happened in these accidents and what causes were combined in the future? Usually, it's 6 months or 3 years. What areas do you think should be investigated now?

[Baek Seungju]
Aircraft accidents are especially international flights between countries, so manufacturer Boeing has to collect a lot of data between Thailand and Korea, and between Korea and international countries, and over a very long period of time. And if you carefully analyze these things and build the various scenarios I mentioned, it is very careful because it is also a process of investigating the accident itself and establishing measures to prevent similar accidents afterwards. So even in the case of the San Francisco crash, it took about a year for us to get almost official results. At the briefing of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, I said this for 6 months to 3 years, but I think it will be closer to 6 months out of 6 months and 3 years. It's because it's near the airport and there's no big problem collecting data, so it's not a big open ocean, but to put it another way quickly, I think the process of finding a clear result is something we should be interested in rather than quickly drawing out results.

[Anchor]
The aircraft now had aviation oil in it and that led to a big fire. But in an emergency situation, there is a manual that discharges the remaining fuel, so were there any such methods?

[Baek Seungju]
That's right. So, if you only judged the fuselage landing first, in the case of the ground fire brigade earlier, you should have a fire fighting facility rescue system in advance. Sprinkle some foam.

[Anchor]
What kind of drugs do foam spray to prevent a fire from getting bigger?

[Baek Seungju]
That's right. In the case of oil fires, you shouldn't spray water because it's an oil fire. So, in order to extinguish the oil fire, the foam mixed with air is covered with fire extinguishing medicine, and in order to reduce friction and prevent it in advance, the vehicle and the fire are already completed in the fuselage landing, so it is sprayed in advance. So there was a death accident in San Francisco because it was distributed over a certain period of time with too many accurate manuals. So, since the foam was piled high, you have to do that to prevent a fire a little. And even in the case of the plane you mentioned, depending on the model, there are some models that have that method, and even if not, the turning cost is continued to burn enough fuel inside, and then the fuselage landing is attempted after exhausting the fuel. But here, at least in the part where there was no such action before the unofficial two accident situations shown in the report video, you can expect that the fuselage landing was sudden.

[Anchor]
So, I didn't have enough time to prepare for the work of putting foam on the runway or installing these nets. It's like this.

[Baek Seungju]
That's right. So, for example, I gave a short time and tried to land the fuselage, but I had no choice but to enter the stage of the fuselage landing. Because now it's seen as a part. So if you look at the screen video now, you can't see the dust on the runway and the part where you're shooting your foam like this. The other thing is almost the north of what I mentioned. So runway 1 is a straight north direction with a 10-degree turn. So if it was in the north direction, the fire brigade would have made the location of the end of the runway in the north direction the most important base. But we changed the landing point to the bottom in an instant. Then we have to change it again. It wasn't shared because it was only 4 minutes to the point where it didn't even take such a long time. Of course, this part is not intentional. So it shows that there was an error in a procedure.

[Anchor]
Aren't there parts where you couldn't return enough when you returned and parts where you couldn't set the angle properly because it was too short? Is it because it was no longer propelled by engine defects?

[Baek Seungju]
For example, if I knew that the landing gear had been broken to the point that I had to decide to land the fuselage, I would have spent as much time as possible when returning the plane, but in the part that I changed direction to the south in an instant, the situation where I should have made such a quick decision because of engine defects and things like that after the bird collision continued.

[Anchor]
You're saying that you decided to go down right away because you thought you couldn't float anymore, right?

[Baek Seungju]
There's a part like that. This is because it is very difficult to fly, but if the rudder is adjusted just by downhill, you can try to land. But if the engine breaks down while turning like this, it loses its direction. So, if any situation was critical before judging the fuselage landing, and if you really judged the fuselage landing, you would have taken action on the plane and done it on the ground, but without that procedure, you made the fuselage landing right away. So a little question arises in that area.

[Anchor]
But since we made a fuselage landing after May Day, didn't the captain make that decision in the short time between May Day and the fuselage landing?

[Baek Seungju]
That's right. Since it is relatively transmitted to the accident time and about 4 minutes, the entire time to glide down the runway was not 4 minutes. So, if you say it's May Day at the point of downhill before you reach it, it's...

[Anchor]
It's said that it's up to the captain's judgment.

[Baek Seungju]
Conversely, the Mayday signal will be issued when it is impossible to recover to the safety situation on the plane. So when you can't communicate with the control station or assist with other devices, you'll be asked to rescue after this location, so in this dangerous situation, you'll have to land if you don't have an engine failure that makes it even more impossible to take off. So it can be expected that there was a complex altitude that was so high that it was impossible to fly around using up fuel. If you follow the process of analyzing how this part was done after May Day, internal voice records, and communication records, you can expect that it can be inferred if you analyze it because it is not enough data.

[Anchor]
I see. Let's stop here. So far, I have talked with Baek Seung-joo, a professor of fire prevention and safety at Open Cyber University in Korea. Thank you.