Like so many people right now, Jeon Je-young is coming to grips with tragedy.
His daughter was one of the 179 people who died in the plane crash on Sunday morning at South Korea’s Muan International Airport.
“This is unbelievable,” he told reporters.
The plane crash was caught on video. Jeju Airlines flight 2216 can be seen touching down without its landing gear deployed. The plane skids down the tarmac and then slams into a wall and explodes into flames.
Scott Miller, a commercial airline pilot and aviation lecturer at San Jose State University called this incident, “shocking.”
“It appeared that this flight was completely and utterly normal up until the very last seconds, and then it came apart in a very horrifying fashion,” he said.
Miller has a lot of questions.
“There is data available, ADSB data, automatic dependent surveillance broadcast, that continuously broadcasts the position, speed, and altitude of the airplane at virtually all times. When you look at that data, it appears they were set up for a normal approach and landing at appropriate speeds, and something went terribly and tragically wrong,” he said. “ADSB data normally broadcasts whenever there is power applied to the airplane. The last broadcast that received when the aircraft was still 500 feet in the air, and the broadcast stopped. That in itself is very interesting and needs to be investigated.”