On December 29, 2024, a Boeing 737-800 aircraft on a flight from Thailand to South Korea crash-landed at Muan International Airport, South Korea, killing 179 of the 181 people on board.

The flight was operated by Jeju Air Co Ltd, the largest South Korean low-cost airline.

The accident marked the deadliest aviation disaster involving a South Korean airliner since the 1997 crash of Korean Air Flight 801 in Guam and became the deadliest aviation incident on South Korean soil. This was also the first fatal crash in the history of Jeju Air, which was 19 years in existence at the time of the accident.

Accident investigators are gathering evidence to determine the cause of this accident. However, preliminary data seems to suggest a landing gear hydraulic system failure linked to a bird strike.

A bird strike is a collision between an airborne animal, usually a bird or bat, and a moving aircraft.

The term is also used for bird deaths resulting from collisions with structures, such as power lines, towers and wind turbines.

Bird strikes are a significant threat to flight safety causing a number of aircraft accidents, some with human casualties.

There are approximately 13,000 bird strikes annually in the US alone.

However, the number of major accidents involving civil aircraft is quite low. The majority of bird strikes cause little damage to the aircraft, but the collision is usually fatal to the birds involved.

Vultures and geese are the most hazardous types of birds to aircraft in the US.

Most accidents occur when a bird or group of birds collide with the windscreen or are sucked into the engine of a jet aircraft.

These cause damages that have been estimated at US$400 million annually within the US and up to US$1.2 billion to commercial aircraft worldwide.

Bird strikes happen most often during takeoff and landing, or during low-altitude flight. However, bird strikes have also been reported as high as 20,000 to 30,000 ft above the ground.

Bar-headed geese have been seen flying as high as 33,383 ft above sea level.

An aircraft over the Ivory Coast collided with a Rüppell's vulture at the altitude of 37,100 ft, the current avian height record.

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The majority of bird collisions occur near airports during takeoff and landing. The point of impact is usually any forward-facing edge of the aircraft such as a wing leading edge, nose cone, jet engine cowling and engine inlet.

Jet engine bird ingestion is extremely serious due to the rotation speed of the engine fan and engine design. As the bird strikes a fan blade, that blade can be displaced into another rearward blade, causing a cascading failure.

Jet engines are particularly vulnerable during the takeoff phase when the engine is turning at a very high speed and the aircraft is at a low altitude where birds are more commonly found.

The impact force of a bird strike on an aircraft depends on the weight of the bird and the speed of the aircraft at the point of impact.

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