A crane lifts the tail section during the salvage operation of the Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 aircraft at Muan International Airport, in Muan, on Jan 3, 2025. - AFP Kok Yufeng
SINGAPORE: Checks by Singapore’s authorities in the wake of the deadly Jeju Air crash in December have found no anomalies or reliability issues on the fleet of Boeing 737-800 aircraft here, said Transport Minister Chee Hong Tat on Wednesday (Jan 8).
This is the same aircraft model as the plane that smashed into a concrete structure housing navigational equipment at the end of the runway at Muan International Airport in South Korea on Dec 29, 2024, killing 179 people on board.
Chee told Parliament that there are no such concrete structures near runways at Singapore’s airports. All air navigation equipment located near runways here are designed to break off in the event of a collision, he noted.
The minister was responding to Ang Wei Neng (West Coast GRC), who had asked about the lessons that can be learnt from the crash of Jeju Air Flight 2216, and how Singapore is preparing itself to prevent a similar occurrence.
Ang had originally filed a question about passenger volumes and capacity at Changi Airport, but later raised a question on the fatal incident - the worst aviation accident on South Korean soil. There were just two survivors.
Chee said the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) is in touch with its South Korean counterpart, as well as the US Federal Aviation Administration and plane maker Boeing, about the crash.
CAAS has also checked the maintenance of relevant systems on B737-800 planes here and found no issues, he said.
“We convey our deepest condolences to the victims and their families... We will review and take the necessary preventive actions as more information about the incident becomes available,” he added.
The exact cause of the Jeju Air crash has yet to be determined, with a bird strike, faulty landing gear and the concrete runway barrier at Muan Airport cited as potential issues.
The head of the investigation team in South Korea said on Jan 7 that it is too early to conclude what caused the crash. But the assumption for now is that bird strikes had occurred on at least one of the plane’s two engines, leading to an attempted emergency landing.
CAAS’ latest records show that there were seven B737-800 aircraft registered in Singapore as at November 2024, all of them operated by national carrier Singapore Airlines (SIA) and inherited from its now-defunct subsidiary SilkAir.
Two of these planes have since been retired, and five remain in service.
Another B737-800 jet is expected to be removed from SIA’s operating fleet by March, leaving four of these aircraft in the air then. As SIA takes delivery of new B737-8 Max jets, the remaining planes will be phased out.
On the issue of Changi Airport’s capacity, Chee said the airport handled about 61 million passengers between January and November 2024.
On an annualised basis, this is about 70 per cent of Changi’s handling capacity of 90 million a year.
He said overall passenger traffic was expected to almost reach pre-Covid-19 levels in 2024, and is very likely to exceed pre-pandemic levels in 2025.
In 2019, the airport handled 68.3 million passengers.
Chee acknowledged the need for Changi Airport to prepare for the increase in passenger volumes, as it will need to rely on its existing four terminals before the future Terminal 5 is ready in the mid-2030s.
He pointed to the $3 billion being invested by operator Changi Airport Group over the next six years to improve services such as baggage handling and check-in, which he said will help the airport to stay competitive.
CAAS is also carrying out a manpower study for the aviation sector to see how it can attract, retain and prepare workers for this future growth, he added. - The Straits Times/ANN
