Indeed, this one. But was it known to the pilots? The other dangerous obstacles you mention tend to be known and visible, not hidden and unexpected (against best practices).
The pilots didn't have to land there, they could have attempted a US Airways Flight 1549 rather than aiming at a piece of reinforced concrete.
You are making an assumption here, that I think is unreasonable: that the pilots (who have probably landed at this airport hundreds of times, it's not like they don't know the place) were expecting a large piece of reinforced concrete to be in the path of the plane.
I'm speculating, of course, but pilots made the decision to land there (albeit in a very short amount of time). They probably made the reasonable assumption that they could "safely" (as safe as it can be, of course) overshoot the runway in that direction. They were certainly not expecting to hit a concrete structure that would pulverize their plane.
Having large concrete structures near airports is not unreasonable, hiding them absolutely is. If instead of a hidden piece of concrete it had been a terminal like in SFO, a sea wall, or another known hazardous structure, the pilots could very well have decided to land somewhere else. Including in the very large body of water next to (or beyond) the runway.
You don't know, I don't know, and we might never know depending on what is uncovered by the investigation.
Firstly, this airport has only been taking international flights since the early December.
There was also construction work going on at one end of the runway (until March), and the threshold was pushed back 300 metres, shortening the runway by that much:
The runway also is not flat (which is why the localiser beams at that end need to be raised in the first place to intercept the correct glideslope angle).
As the OP mentioned, trying this (a very fast landing, with no gear or flaps, spoilers) at many airports around the world on such a short runway (albeit one which with gear and flaps down is long enough for normal landings with the required 240 m runoff areas), is not going to work well.
Of course, I'm making the assumption that the pilots somehow had to attempt a "a very fast landing, with no gear or flaps, spoilers". The core of the issue is probably there, hopefully the investigation will yield useful results.
But what I am fundamentally questioning is whether the pilots would have attempted that landing if they had been expecting a piece of reinforced concrete at the end of the runway.
To say it differently, it's not the existence of deadly obstacles near an airport that bothers me (after all, some runways are quite literally in the middle of cities), but the fact that the pilots could have reasonably not know about them. That, for me, is a pretty big issue.
There were plenty of concrete structures nearby when US Airways Flight 1549 ditched into the Hudson river: notice the pilot aimed for a path where there weren't any. Maybe that Jeju air pilot could have attempted something similar. Maybe not. But the absurd nature of that deadly piece of reinforced concrete probably didn't help making a good decision.
In most airports you can expect highways, buildings, water and other structures after the runoff area.
The airport where it happened doesn’t appear to have any less clearance than usual around the runway [1], if not more when comparing to Jeju Airport for example [2].
You're making an assumption that the outcome would have been different if that wall wasn't there. You're wrong. 50m past that wall is another wall, 5m after that is a highway.
Indeed I'm making tons of assumptions, but you have not yet convinced me that they are wrong. A brick wall is no reinforced concrete, and how is a road at plane level fundamentally different from the runway the plane was "gliding" on?
People should stop doing this. Transport category airplanes are designed to suffer multiple failures and still be controllable. Why the airplane landed where it did, when it did, and how fast it did are the relevant questions.
>I do not think speculations on HN are impacting the investigation
They are and will negatively impact the final impression of the investigation results, namely an unwarranted focus on The Wall(tm) (people here are calling it the "Murder Wall", which demonstrates my point) which helps precisely noone.
The focus should primarily be on the plane, particularly in the interests of preventing a repeat.
Are you this "air safety expert" is part of the investigation team? Because otherwise, I don't think the actual investigators care about their opinion, or yours, or that of any media (mainstream or not)...
I'm not competent to judge, but from what I read on another website, two additional elements [1]. On the video of the bird strike flaps were deployed, but during the crash they weren't. The plane did a 180º and landed on a different runway than it was initially approaching (tailwind, making it worse).
This suggests (this is only speculation) a scenario akin to: normal approach for landing -> brid strike -> go around (retract flaps and full power on the remaining engine) -> loss of power on the second engine (so no more hydraulic power, and no power to climb) -> attempt to land in very unfavorable conditions.
As you say, give it a couple at least a day if not more to settle.
I've been running a Japanese green tea-of-the-month club on the side, with a friend and a (very part-time) employee in Japan [1]. It's bringing about $2000/month gross, and slightly under $500/month net.
Related acronyms: RTFA (Read The F**ing Article) and RTFM (Read The F**ing Manual). The latter was a very common answer when struggling with Linux in the early 2000s...
Ariane 6 is quite heavily subsidized, with ArianeGroup getting €340M per year to operate it [1]. With an expected 10 launches per year, that's about €34M/launch.
But in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter: Europe needs to be able to put its own military satellites (or anything else critical) up there. Military satellites sold to third party countries also won't launch themselves...
All major aerospace companies and projects are heavily subsidized in every country otherwise they would never survive or even be born. Like how much profit did NASA make over its lifetime?
NASA is a government agency though, so it doesn't have profit generation as its target. And that's fine, neither does the US army or any other government branch except for the tax office.
Right? At a certain point, governments are the only entities that can afford to send things to space. "Highly-subsidized" here just means "government is 99% of company's market base".
That certain point is in the past. Today, all sorts of private entities send things into space. As launch gets cheaper, private activities in space will dominate, if they don't already.
> But in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter: Europe needs to be able to put its own military satellites (or anything else critical) up there. Military satellites sold to third party countries also won't launch themselves...
I'm very surprised the EU and the USA and SpaceX didn't work out a deal to buy a certain number of F9's to be launched and operated from the EU. The EU would pay a (vey high) price to buy outright the rockets, and would agree not to develop a competing rocket design in the next 20 yrs.
> The EU would pay a (vey high) price to buy outright the rockets, and would agree not to develop a competing rocket design in the next 20 yrs.
So the worst of both worlds? It would still be very expensive, but also dependent on a foreign entity and with hands tied for the next decades unable to develop people, skills, or products in that direction.
European space programs are motivated by jobs, retaining domestic skills and actual usefulness in that order. Funding is allocated to companies based primarily on the country they’re in - funding must be split across all funding countries.
ESA is never going to just buy a rocket, because that would completely defeat the point of ESA.
Why? That would be a bad deal for ESA. Instead of being behind 10 years with a fighting chance to catch-up, they would be 20 years behind and dependent on one, maybe two unreliable partners (Musk and maybe the USA under Trump).
Would that even be possible? SpaceX would need to either provide intense training (engineering, operating, etc) for their rockets, or to provide the staff and facilities themselves; basically the company would need to double its staff (if not more) to support a scheme like that.
I mean it makes sense, why not sell off rockets and whatnot commercially like the mass production strategy that Musk has in mind? But I don't think there's enough launches yet to warrant that. In fact, SpaceX is booked full for the next few years already; unless that's intentional, they simply don't have the production capacity to humour that idea.
> A thing that is not happening is letting private companies innovate in this space in Europe, as Ariane is still mostly government funded in the EU.
To name a few (albeit not all private): Avio (Italy), HyImpulse Technologies (Germany), Isar Aerospace (Germany), MaiaSpace (France), PLD Space (Spain), Rocket Factory Augsburg (Germany) and Latitude (France).
From what I can tell, ArianeGroup was completely oblivious to SpaceX successes, and reacted (way) too late. Ariane 6 is the panic mode reaction to try to remain somewhat relevant and somewhat competitive. Europe needs a launcher anyway, so in fact I'm not convinced this Ariane 6 was really necessary: keeping Ariane 5 as-is (or maybe streamlining its production a bit to cut the fat) would probably have been enough.
ArianeGroup is going the reusable route eventually anyway. They don't have a choice: it's currently called Ariane Next [0] and is expected to enter into service in the 2030s. I'm not convinced the current concept will remain unchanged, since it doesn't exist yet and will probably evolve depending on Starship and other SpaceX projects success (not just technical, but also commercial).
In parallel to Ariane 6 (and as a precursor to Ariane Next?) there are a bunch of European companies developing small launchers to test new technologies: Avio, HyImpulse Technologies, Isar Aerospace, MaiaSpace [1] (owned by ArianeGroup), PLD Space, Rocket Factory Augsburg and Latitude. Probably others I didn't hear about.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by saying that the Japanese road network is not a grid. In terms of actual layout, it's quite grid-like. I would even say it's usually much closer to a nicely laid-out grid than the mess any European city is.
What Japan lacks are addresses that can be found easily without using a map. Apart from Kyoto, roads in Japanese cities don't have names (or number), so addresses within cities are not "{number} {name of street}". Cities are cut in areas smaller and smaller all the way down to a block. The last number will be the house on that block. So addresses within cities are "{name of area} {sub-area number} {block number} {house number}", with some variations from city to city.
An address might be "Nantokacho 11-16-8", which means the 8th house around the 16th block of the 11th sub-area of the Nantoka area. Good luck figuring that out without a map!
The pilots didn't have to land there, they could have attempted a US Airways Flight 1549 rather than aiming at a piece of reinforced concrete.
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