South Korea will remove concrete barriers near runways in response to air disaster, reports say

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea will remove concrete embankments near airport runways in response to a recent air disaster, media reports said Thursday.

The embankments contain antennas called localizers designed to guide aircraft during landings and have been blamed for making last month’s crash of a Jeju Air plane worse.

The Boeing 737-800 skidded off a runway in the South Korean city of Muan on Dec. 29 after its landing gear failed to deploy, slamming into the concrete structure and bursting into flames, killing all but two of the 181 people on board.

The Transport Ministry said it will replace the structures with breakable materials that are safer, the Korea JoongAng Daily newspaper and other media reported.

South Korean officials have pledged to improve airport safety after experts linked the high death toll to Muan airport’s localizer system.

The black boxes of the Boeing jetliner stopped recording about four minutes before the accident, South Korean officials said, possibly complicating investigations into the cause of the disaster.

Investigators have said that air traffic controllers warned the pilot about possible bird strikes two minutes before the aircraft issued a distress signal confirming that a bird strike had occurred, after which the pilot attempted an emergency landing.