
Pilots ‘switched off wrong engine' in South Korea crash that killed 179
The Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board (ARAIB) found that the right engine of the Jeju Air Boeing 737 stopped working after the plane collided with a flock of ducks. Meanwhile, the left engine continued to produce power.
However, instead of turning off the damaged engine on the right-hand side, the pilots cut power to the side that was still operational, leaving the plane without any working engines.
The investigators said: 'A pilot may have mistakenly turned off the engine.'
The cockpit voice recorder captured the pilot saying 'shut down engine number two', but the flight data shows that the pilots instead switched off engine number one, likely in error because of the pressure of the situation.
An official told South Korea's MBN television news: 'The pilot should have turned off the right engine, which was severely damaged by the bird strike, but he turned off the left engine, which was spinning, and the black box and power went out.'
The pilots on the Jeju Air flight had also activated the left engine's fire extinguisher, which makes it impossible for the engine to be restarted while the aircraft is in flight, the report said.
News of the pilots' role in the Jeju Air crash comes less than a week after it was revealed that the fatal Air India crash in June, which killed all but one of the 242 passengers on board, was also caused by the pilot's error after he cut off the fuel supply.
The South Korean plane, which crashed on Dec 29 2024, hit the ground at a dangerously high speed without its landing gear lowered and exploded after colliding with an embankment at the end of the runway.
All 175 passengers and four of the six crew members were killed in South Korea's worst aviation disaster in decades.
The pilots of Flight 2216 had also ignored the correct procedure for how to land after a bird strike by climbing the aircraft back up and then turning it to make a rushed landing in the opposite direction on the same runway.
The collision with the birds had occurred as the aircraft was preparing for its descent into Muan International airport, located in the southern part of the country.
The airport's air traffic control issued a warning at 8:57am that there was bird activity detected in the area, and a minute later the pilot reported a bird strike and issued a mayday call.
Video footage later showed that the right engine had erupted in flames and the investigation found feathers and duck blood in both engines.
ARAIB presented its findings on Saturday, but the families of the victims accused officials of unfairly blaming the pilots at the press conference.
The investigators had to quickly retrieve copies of the report, claiming that it had not yet been formally issued.
Investigators maintain that there were no engine defects or mechanical failures, although power to the aircraft's flight recorders was shut off for the last four minutes of the flight, so there could be key information that remains unknown.
Kim Yu-jin, the head of the relatives' group, said: 'When investigators take a position, it should be accompanied by documents that support their position and convince the bereaved family that their conclusions are inevitable. We were only given their conclusions.
'We have repeatedly asked them to be careful about these disclosures because the way that the results of the investigation are communicated can have an impact on the compensation that families receive.''

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The Guardian
7 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘We're watching it get worse all the time': as fish vanish in SA's algal bloom, livelihoods are also at stake
Nathan Eatts can remember the last day he caught a squid. It was 18 April, a few weeks after a brown foam and dead marine life began appearing on beaches on South Australia's Fleurieu peninsula. 'That's over three months now,' says the third generation squid fisher, whose business, Cape Calamari, is based on the southern Fleurieu peninsula. 'Everyone just sort of says 'go fish for something else', but it's not that simple, because we're under a quota system and 95% of what I fish for is calamari.' Since March, Eatts has seen dead stingrays, fish and a dolphin – and that's just at his local beach in Normanville. It is both emotionally and financially devastating. 'Last time I fished, I caught four whiting,' he says. 'That doesn't pay any bills, it puts eight fillets on my table.' The toxic algal bloom that has killed thousands of marine animals around the state has put fishers like him under pressure in areas including Kangaroo Island and the St Vincent and Spencer gulfs. Squid fishers like Eatts were among the first to feel the impact of the disaster on their business. 'We're trying to be optimistic about squid as it's one thing we haven't seen wash up dead,' Eatts says. 'We're hoping they're in deeper water waiting for this to clear but until this clears we just have to sit back and wait, and we're watching it get worse all the time. It's heartbreaking.' This week, under pressure from community advocates, scientists and South Australian politicians such as Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, the federal and state governments announced a $28m assistance package for affected communities and parliamentary inquiry into the crisis. However the federal government has stopped short of declaring the crisis a natural disaster, which would trigger more resources, saying it did not meet relevant definitions. The South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas, warned politicians against getting caught up in technicalities and said it should be described as a natural disaster. Senator Hanson-Young also called on the government to 'declare this the emergency it is'. For fishing businesses that have bills piling up, the pledged assistance package money is welcome help in the short term. However, it is not known when the algal bloom will clear and the industry expects there will be communities in need of more long-term support. 'There is extreme regional impact,' says Kyri Toumazos, executive officer at Seafood Industry South Australia. But some parts of the state have been hit harder than others. Toumazos says wild catch and aquaculture businesses in Kangaroo Island have been affected since 'day dot' of the disaster, as had communities south of Adelaide. In Port Lincoln on the Spencer Gulf, where thousands of people are employed either directly or indirectly by the seafood industry, he says some aquaculture businesses were limiting their harvests due to the algal bloom. Some wild catch businesses in the area were feeling the effects too. 'The biggest concern for us is the longer the algal bloom persists, then the greater the chance of longer term impact for our fisheries,' he says. Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton's Clear Air column as a free newsletter Work to better understand the economic costs to fishing communities and the effects of the bloom on fishing stocks will take place over coming months, says Toumazos, but it could be up to a year before a detailed picture emerges. He said the state and federal governments had been receptive to the need to undertake this work. The chair of Oysters South Australia, Peter Treloar, said the oyster industry had seen the closure of harvest zones in and around Gulf St Vincent including at Stansbury and Port Vincent and at American River on Kangaroo Island. 'The bulk of our oyster growers are located around the coastline of Eyre peninsula and they remain open for sale,' Treloar says. 'It's worth saying that the algal bloom first appeared in Gulf St Vincent some three months ago now and the oyster growers in and around Gulf St Vincent have been closed for sales for two and a half months.' He said these oyster growers had not been able to sell any product and have had effectively no cashflow for that entire period. RecFish South Australia's executive officer, Asher Dezsery, says recreational fishing tourism has also slowed. Regional areas that rely on income from short term accommodation and bait and tackle sales are suffering. 'People are cancelling their trips and not travelling around South Australia whilst this algal bloom is happening,' Dezsery says. A persistent marine heatwave affects the waters off South Australia, kicked off with sea surface temperatures reaching 2.5C above average. A mysterious sea foam appears at beaches on the Fleurieu Peninsula, with reports of more than 100 surfers becoming ill, and deaths of leafy sea dragons, fish and octopi. Marine biologists from the University of Technology Sydney find high numbers of a tiny harmful algal species called Karenia mikimotoi in water samples collected from affected beaches. Prof Shauna Murray – who identified the algae under the microscope and by analysing its DNA – says while still not well understood, K mikimotoi is thought to produce a reactive oxygen that caused gill cell damage in fish – which means they can not breathe. By this point, more than 200 marine species have been killed by the bloom, which stretches along more than 150 kilometres worth of coastline. A powerful storm and high tides washes the algae into the Coorong, staining the water like strong tea before turning it into a slurry. Water testing confirms the presence of the algae in the Coorong. Abnormally high tides, strong winds and large waves lashes the South Australian coastline, with multiple reports of fish deaths along the Adelaide metropolitan coastline reported in the aftermath. Testing confirms the toxic algae had entered West Lakes. While the algae has been detected at the inlet, it had not yet been detected at three other testing sites. 'What this does is highlight just how important recreational fishing is to regional towns and areas such as Yorke peninsula, southern Fleurieu and the west coast.' Scientists from the Biodiversity Council warned this week that the wildlife impacts of the marine heatwave that has driven the catastrophic algal bloom were likely to be equivalent to those from the black summer bushfires and would need a similar response from governments. They've called for tens of millions in additional funding for immediate environmental measures – including at least $10m to fund urgent research into the impact and possible mitigation of the bloom – and for governments to commit to seven actions to respond to the 'foreseeable and even predicted' event. That includes rapid acceleration of decarbonisation efforts because minimising ocean warming was 'the most important step in preventing harmful algal blooms' along all Australian coastlines. Darcie Carruthers, the South Australia-based nature campaigner for the Australian Conservation Foundation, spent the week travelling the coast talking to people in affected communities. She says family-run businesses like Eatts's squid company relied on nature being healthy and were carrying the weight of the crisis. 'In this part of Australia, healthy nature and successful business are one and the same,' she says. 'Communities and industries, including tourism, hospitality and small fishing businesses, that rely directly on a healthy marine ecosystem to survive are desperate for help and for this algal bloom to end.' Bart Butson, a commercial fisher in Port Wakefield at the head of Gulf St Vincent, says the crisis had taken an emotional toll. 'I'm really sad to see that the Gulf is sick, it's terrible,' he says. 'Emotionally that's been the hardest thing for me, is to go out there and see funny coloured water and some iconic fish species dying and floating on the surface. 'I never realised how much I loved the ecosystem until it had become unwell and then it really hit me.' While so far he has been able to get by, there is great uncertainty for his future. Many fishers he knows have been caught off-guard by the bloom, he says, and are now feeling unsure about the future of their businesses. 'They just don't have any fish, they don't catch fish, they don't go fishing any more.'


The Guardian
10 hours ago
- The Guardian
Too much moose meat was factor in plane crash that killed Alaska lawmaker's husband
Antlers strapped to a wing and too much moose meat on board caused a small plane crash that killed the husband of then Alaska Democratic congresswoman Mary Peltola in 2023, according to a US national transportation safety board (NTSB) report that was recently released. Though the report doesn't name him, Eugene 'Buzzy' Peltola Jr was the pilot and lone person on the Piper PA-18 plane involved in the deadly wreck, which occurred near St Mary's, Alaska, on 12 September 2023, officials had previously said. Peltola Jr, 57, had taken some hunters to a remote wilderness area where they killed a moose, said the NTSB report published Tuesday. When the crash that ended his life happened, the report said, he was flying alone while carrying enough moose meat to push the plane past 'its maximum certified gross weight' by nearly 120lbs. The doomed pilot had also installed 'an unapproved external load' – in his case, antlers tied to the right wing strut – at the time the plane went down. Peltola Jr ultimately ended 'degraded takeoff performance and flight characteristics', leading to his losing control of the plane, shortly before the fatal wreck, NTSB investigators said. As the NTSB recounted, it was his second trip flying moose meat that day. Peltola and the hunters had loaded an initial batch of meat on the plane that afternoon, and he had uneventfully ferried it to a local airport. He flew back to the hunters about four hours for what was supposed to be a second and final load of moose meat. The group strapped into the rear passenger seat as well as packed it into the airplane's belly pod, 'which did not have tie-down provision', the 16-page NTSB report noted. Peltola Jr then tied moose antlers to the right wing strut, the report said, leaving them 'cupped upward and perpendicular to the direction of flight'. The report said the pilot had weighed the cargo with scales, and it turned out the plane was 117lbs – roughly 6% – over its maximum takeoff weight. Investigators wrote that the hunters watched Peltola Jr as he evidently struggled to take off and were relieved at first to see his plane become airborne, watching it vanish from view behind a ridge. But the plane did not reappear from behind the ridge and 'had crashed just beyond their view in the opposite direction of takeoff,' the NTSB report recounted. Two hunters provided first aid to Peltola Jr, who the NTSB said initially survived the crash. However, he died from his injuries within hours, according to the agency. Peltola Jr was the former Alaska regional director for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He had also spent more than three decades working for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and he served as vice-mayor and council member for the city of Bethel, Alaska. Shortly after her husband's death, Mary Peltola's chief of staff at the time, Anton McParland, said in a media statement that Eugene was 'completely devoted' to his family. 'And he simply adored Mary,' McParland's statement said. Peltola became the first Alaska Native in Congress when she won her US House seat in a special election and then retained it in the 2022 midterm elections, twice beating the former governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin. She lost her November 2024 re-election bid to Republican opponent Nick Begich III and is now the senior director of Alaska affairs at the Holland & Hart law firm.


Daily Mail
13 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Aviation expert questions ‘missing seconds' in Air India disaster report with timestamps that ‘don't match up'
An aviation expert has demanded answers over the unexplained 10 seconds before the tragic Air India crash that killed 260 people, saying: 'The timestamps just don't match up.' A preliminary report into the tragedy revealed that before the crash, two fuel switches - which are used to start or shut down the engines and are typically left on during flight - were moved from 'Run' to 'Cutoff', depriving the engines of fuel. The report also revealed there had been confusion in the cabin when Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and his co-pilot Clive Kunder, 28, realised the fault, before desperate attempts were made to flick them back. In an inteview with Piers Morgan on his YouTube show Uncensored, Captain Kishore Chinta - a military aviator and former air accident investigator - said that unexplained actions and delays during a 10-second window after takeoff are central to understanding what went wrong with Boeing's 787 Dreamliner. He said: 'The timestamps just don't match up. And if it took one second to put out both the switches quickly, why did it take four seconds to put them back on?' 'Practically, whatever happened, happened in the first 10 seconds from the lift off. The timestamp doesn't match up', Chinta added. The doomed aircraft took off at 8:08:39 seconds in Ahmedebad for its journey to London. About three seconds later, the jet with 242 people on board reached its maximum recorded airspeed. But within the space of just one second, both of the plane's engine fuel switches turned off from its run positions. In addition, the report did not reveal any further conversation between the two pilots during in the moments before the disaster. It would take another 10 seconds before the first fuel switch was moved back to its run position, and another four seconds after that for the second switch to snap back, according to a sequence laid out in the official preliminary report on the fatal crash. Following the preliminary report, questions have been raised over the intentions of the pilot of the Air India plane Captain Sabharwal, with some commentators believing the commercial flight was brought down deliberately. The veteran aviator, who had more than 8,200 hours in the cockpit, is being looked into by investigators over suggestions he turned off the plane's fuel switches, causing it to lose power. But Captain Chinta blasted this theory and said: 'We're doing gross injustice to the pilots who are not there to defend themselves by guestimating and coming up with theories which are mere assumptions.' He added the key to solving the mystery of the doomed flight could lie with the fuel cut off switches and whether they can be turned off in any other way than manually. 'Those fuel switches went to cut off but the report doesn't mention anywhere that those, physically, those switches moved. That is what is the key to the entire theory. So, those switches, moved? We do not know. Yes, those shut off the fuel supply, which caused the engines to lose power? Yes. Why that happened, we do not know right now'. Internet star Captain Steve, joined in on the conversation with Piers Morgan and revealed that he believes one of the pilots was behind the crash. Seconds after taking off on June 12, two fuel switches in the cockpit of Air India Flight 171 were turned off, a preliminary report revealed Hoorifying footage showed the moment the plane crashed, with a massive fireball erupting in the horizon 'The only answer that really fits all of the parameters is that the fuel control switches, as they say in the report, transitioned from run to cut off. 'But that doesn't happen without human intervention, and anybody that operates those switches knows that they are spring-loaded into position. They have a detent to hold them there. They don't vibrate out of position. That's never happened…The only way you can move those switches is to put a hand on them and move them back and then move them back up.' But he has also called for more transparency. 'You know, what would solve all this Piers, would be if the people who wrote this report got in front of a camera and behind a microphone,' he said. Ed Pierson, Executive Director & Foundation for Aviation Safety and former Boeing worker, told Piers Morgan Uncensored that before concluding it was the pilot's fault all the possible system errors should be considered. 'There's a lot of things that need to be examined here, systems wise, before we again jump to the conclusion that this was a pilot making a mistake or even intentionally.' The doomed Air India flight crashed last month and killed 260 people. It had set off for London at 1:38pm and remained airborne for about 30 seconds before losing power and falling to the ground. Upon impact, it was engulfed by a huge fireball, claiming the lives of all but one person on board. Sources close to the investigation believe recordings of the conversation from the Boeing's black box support the view that the captain cut the flow of fuel to the plane's engines. Friends and colleagues also reject the idea Sabharwal was responsible, claiming he was a 'gentle soul' and an 'ace pilot' who had never been involved in any major incident prior to the crash. Neil Pais, 61, a former colleague of Sabharwal, told The Telegraph he was 'one of the nicest people you could ever hope to fly with'. 'He had absolutely no airs about himself, so humble, so respectful. Always a smile when he spoke to you,' he added. 'I never once saw him raise his voice or lose his temper. And yet he never compromised on work or safety. If there was an issue, he'd point it out, but always in the nicest possible way.' Another colleague and close friend, Captain Kapil Kohal, said Sabharwal was a 'hero' with a 'gentle soul'. Despite his nickname of 'Sad Sack', given because of his 'melancholic eyes', Sabharwal was 'deeply charismatic and always ready to help,' he added. A family member cries upon hearing the news of her brother who died when the Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed in Ahmedabad, India, June 12, 2025. An Air India spokesperson previously said: 'Air India stands in solidarity with the families and those affected by the AI171 accident' But the sadness noticed by his peers was resultant of a deeper tragedy. Sabharwal had struggled to come to terms with the death of his mother in 2022 and in the wake of her passing had separated from his wife and moved from Delhi to Mumbai, to be closer to his elderly father, Pushkaraj. Investigations into the tragic crash have reportedly begun to analyse Sabharwal's behaviour after 'several' Air India pilots allegedly confirmed he suffered from poor mental health. He is understood to have taken bereavement leave after his mother's death. Although it is believed that he had been 'medically cleared' by Air India prior to the fatal crash. Friends also revealed Sabharwal had considered retiring as a pilot to help care for his 90-year-old father full time.