No one knows for certain what caused Jeju Air flight 2216 to crash, killing all but two of its 181 passengers and crew. As darkness fell at Muan international airport in South Korea and officials fielded questions from distraught relatives of the dead, the most likely explanation was that the plane had been struck by one or more birds, triggering a sequence of events that prevented the pilot from deploying the landing gear.
Aviation officials focused on bird strikes – and, to a lesser extent, the weather – as the most probable cause, even as some experts said the relatively common phenomenon would not have been enough to cause a catastrophic failure of the landing gear.
I’m having trouble seeing the connection between birds hitting the engine and the lagging gear not being deployed. Can anybody explain that?
My understanding is that once retracted, the gear can only come back down if either there is power from the engines, or from the auxiliary power unit, (a small turbine that extends from the bottom of the plane) which they might not have had time to deploy during an emergency. I’m not an expert.
