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After overcoming pariah status at the end of the last century, South Korea must learn what caused the catastrophe on Dec. 29 and what lessons to draw from it.
Jan. 6, 2025, 12:00 a.m. ET
A Jeju Air crash in South Korea last week, the deadliest plane accident in years, has stunned the global aviation industry. The country is regarded as a model for how to turn poor air safety practices into some of the world’s best.
Three decades ago, South Korea had a dismal record of air safety. Its flagship airline, Korean Air, experienced several deadly crashes in the 1980s and 1990s. In 2001, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration downgraded South Korea’s air safety rating for failing to meet international standards.
Around the turn of the century, South Korea began an immense project to overhaul its aviation safety practices, drawing on the experiences of other countries including the United States. By 2008, South Korea had earned one of the world’s highest scores in a safety audit conducted by the International Civil Aviation Organization. At the time of the crash, it was considered one of the safest countries for flying.
Air safety experts cautioned that it was premature to speculate about what caused the crash on Dec. 29 of Jeju Air Flight 7C2216, in which 179 of the 181 people on board died. It was Jeju Air’s first fatal crash in its two-decade history, and the worst ever on South Korean soil. Jeju Air has said it is “fully cooperating” with investigations into the cause.
With an extensive multinational investigation underway, the experts noted South Korea’s experience in successfully upgrading its safety practices, and said the authorities might ultimately be able to draw similar lessons from the Jeju Air disaster.
“Over the past few decades, Korea and its airlines and government authorities have done very well in terms of implementing safety management systems,” said Hassan Shahidi, president of the Flight Safety Foundation, a nonprofit that provides safety guidance to the aviation industry.
