At 20:53 local time on August 5, 1997, Korean Air Flight 801 was from Seoul Gimpo International Airport, with a destination of Guam Arcania International Airport, and a Boeing 747-300. There were 254 people on board, most of whom were tourists traveling to the pristine beaches of Guam.
Captain Park Yong-chul was a Korean Air Force pilot in his early years. After retiring, he took office in Korean Air . Three months before the incident, he received a flight safety award from the company's president for successfully handling the dangerous situation of the low-altitude engine failure of the passenger plane.
Guam’s total area is less than 600 square kilometers, but its beautiful beach has attracted many tourists to come for vacation. However, Guam in August is the peak of the rainy season, and there will be small thunderstorms at any time, and August 5, 1997 is no exception.
At 1 a.m. local time on August 6, local time, flight 801 contacted Guam radar controller for preparations before landing. The radar controller guided the captain to the left runway 6 of the airport to land, and also reminded that the airport's glide stairs equipment is under repair and cannot be used.
little knowledge
Airs around the world, pilots are guided and landed by glide channels. This electronic system can help the aircraft land stably. However, Guam Airport is under massive repairs, so the slide lights are removed. Without the help of the airport transmitter, the glide duct system is of no use. Without the guidance of the glide passage, although it will increase the difficulty of the pilot's landing, it is not impossible to land. The captain needs to land in a manual control manner.
At this time, something strange happened. Generally speaking, if the glide duct equipment does not work properly, the on-board equipment will not be prompted. However, while the pilot descends, the glide duct indicator suddenly has a signal! The sudden appearance of this signal triggered discussion in the cockpit. Can the glide tray work normally?
At around 1:40 am local time, the Arcania Tower allowed flights to land on the left runway 06. Meanwhile, heavy rain began to rain in Guam. Heavy rain + night flights have severely blocked the pilot's field of vision and extremely low visibility. In this case, the captain begins the final entry mission.
Then, a computerized sound was heard:
500 feet...
400 feet...
300 feet...
200 feet...
This is a warning sound for the ground to approach, informing the crew that the plane is getting closer and closer to the ground! But despite the crew trying hard to see the runway, they still couldn't see anything. There is not much time left for the crew!
Adjust flap , go back to fly!
Korean Air Flight 801 Imaging Schematic diagram. Image source: Wikipedia
At the last moment, the captain made a decision. But even though he pushed the accelerator to the maximum, the near-ground alarm system still reported a lower and lower value. With a "boom", the 747 passenger plane disintegrated on the hillside. The fire quickly burned through the entire plane. However, the most terrifying thing is that the Guam Airport Authority at this time still knew nothing about the plane crash.
aircraft wreckage
After the crash of flight crash, Guam Air Traffic recorded from aviation knowledge 00:0000:29
"This is the Arcania near-field control station. Is Korean Air contacted you?"
"Korean Air 801? No."
l0 "I have allowed it to land, but I don't know where it is now."
"Didn't you see it?"
"No."
"It didn't land?"
"No."
"Oh my god, it may have crashed."
At this time, the radar controller realized that Flight 801 was likely to be crashed. The local fire brigade also immediately launched search and rescue work, but the complex terrain in the local area increased the difficulty of rescue, and the red line along the way indicated that only the Nimitz route could reach the site. In addition, the plane broke a local pipeline when it crashed, and the wreckage across the road formed a large roadblock, and the rescuers could not take a detour, so the fire brigade decided to walk up the mountain.
has many obstacles, slowing down the rescue personnel, causing them to arrive at the scene an hour after the plane crashed. According to the survivor on the plane, as the fire grew bigger and bigger, he watched others shouting for help from the air, to shrill screams, and then to silence.
In the end, only 26 people in flight 801 survived.
Accident Investigation
NTSB quickly launched an investigation after the incident. They focused their main focus on the question of "why are there suddenly signals in the glide duct?" Later, the survey results showed that the flight diagram used by the
1 crew when entering the site at Guam Airport has expired. The minimum safety altitude for landing is 540 feet (about 165 meters), while the correct safety altitude is 656 feet (about 200 meters). In the accident, the flight crew maintained the altitude of the aircraft at 570 feet (about 173 meters) before preparing to land.
2 It may be due to interference from other signal sources that the downhill signal appeared for a while. The airport's minimum safety altitude warning system is often caused by false alarms caused by false signals near the airport, and is repeatedly corrected by engineers that the effective range is getting farther and farther away from the airport, and cannot cover the surrounding area near the airport.
3 Where Korean Air made mistakes in the flight training of crew members: Korean Air's training data shows that the rangefinders of the airport runway are always located at the end of the runway. Although this is the design of most airports, the distance measuring instrument of the Guam Airport 6L runway is set on a mountain 5 kilometers away from the end of the runway. Therefore, when the crew relies on a distance measurement instrument to determine the position of the runway due to obstruction of vision and cannot see the distance due to obstruction of vision, the end of the runway is actually 5 kilometers away from the end of the real runway, causing them to descend prematurely at the flight altitude.
Postscript
As we all know, in the last century, the flight safety of Korean Air (formerly known as Korean Air) was very worrying. After the accident, the "record" of the crash of six planes within three years also caused several countries to terminate cooperation with Korean Air. The United States banned US troops stationed in South Korea from taking Korean Air flights. Even the South Korean president did not choose to take Korean Air planes when he went abroad for private purposes.
If you want to know why the next accident happened,
What are the shortcomings of Korean Air itself at that time?
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