AN AVIATION expert has suggested a possible “sinister” cause of the catastrophic South Korean plane crash that killed 179 people.
Meanwhile, police have raided the airport where the plane crashed, the airline’s office and several other locations as part of the investigation into the disaster.
Speaking on Australia’s “Immediately” program, aviation expert Professor Ron Batsch said there could be something more “sinister” behind the crash than current theories.
He said he believes it is “quite inconceivable that a bird strike alone would be enough to bring down an airplane or to render the landing gear inoperable.”
Bartsch added that the pilot would have known of the high risk of the landing, especially without reverse thrust or flaps available to slow the plane.
“So it could have been, and this is just speculation, that there could have been something more sinister on board the plane that could have caused it,” he told the show.
It is still unclear exactly what happened in the moments before the plane attempted to land without landing gear and skidded down the runway into a wall.
All but two of the 181 on board the plane died after it crashed into a concrete wall and burst into flames.
The leading theory so far has been that a bird hit one of its engines.
Kim Yi-bae, CEO of Jeju airline, told reporters that “nothing abnormal was observed on the landing gear.”
He said a standard pre-flight inspection found “no problems” with the passenger plane before it crashed.
“As for whether the landing gear worked properly, that is directly related to the accident investigation, and we are not in a position to know at this time,” he said at a news conference in Seoul.
However, South Korean police have banned Yi-bae from leaving the country while the investigation continues.
On Thursday, police acted on multiple arrest warrants issued on charges of professional negligence resulting in death.
They searched several locations, including Maun International Airport and the Jeju Airline office in Seoul.
Bosses at the South Korean airline allegedly knew that the concrete wall he crashed into was too close to the runway.
Comments in the airport’s operating guide, posted earlier this year, said the embankment was too close to the end of the runway.
It recommended that the location of the equipment be reviewed during a planned expansion project at the airport, Reuters reports.
It recently emerged that the Boeing 737-800 completed a whopping 13 flights in the 48-hour period before crashing, traveling to five different international destinations.
Industry experts have raised concerns about whether Boeing overstepped its bounds by scheduling too many flights during the peak holiday season.
It was used for a trip between Maun, Jeju island, and Incheon, west of Seoul, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported.
He also traveled to Beijing, Bangkok, Kota Kinabalu, Nagasaki and Taipei.
The official investigation into the cause of the crash is expected to take months as the plane’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders are analyzed.
The plane had two black boxes on board, which record flight data, including cockpit audio, and could help determine the cause of the crash.
One of the boxes was damaged in the accident and will be sent to the United States for analysis because South Korea does not have the technology necessary to extract the data.