Research data shows that all aboard the Jeju Air plane that crashed at Muan International Airport in late 2024 would have survived if there had been no concrete mound supporting the localizer systems.

Rep. Kim Eun-hye of the main opposition People Power Party, who is a senior member of the parliamentary committee tasked with shedding light on the tragedy, said Thursday that such assessment was made in a report the committee acquired from the transport ministry's Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board.

On December 29, 2024, a Jeju Air plane skidded off the runway and crashed into a wall at the Muan Airport, killing all but two of the 181 people on board.

The Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board commissioned the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea last March to analyze the impact the concrete mound had in the plane crash. 

Using super computer analyses, the institute conducted a simulation of the crash and assessed that if the concrete mound had not been there, the plane would have glided a certain distance after landing before coming to a halt, not suffering significant impact.

Though the latest findings are not definitive probe results, it adds weight to arguments both inside and outside aviation industries that had cited the concrete mound as the reason that caused the massive casualty in the crash.