Korean Air Is Flying High After Safety Audit

Korean Air is now conducting a special safety audit of its Airbus A330 fleet, three days after the second incident involving their widebody aircraft occurred in a week. The latest case saw one of their A330-300s headed to Sydney, Australia, return to Seoul on Sunday after one of its Pratt & Whitney PW4000-series turbofans malfunctioned while the engine was in climb mode.

On October 23, a South Korean airline operating an Airbus A330-300 aircraft inbound from Seoul to Cebu Island’s Mactan Airport was forced to abort its landing due to heavy rain and the aircraft overran the runway. All 162 passengers and 11 crew members on board survived after executing two go-arounds, but the aircraft sustained severe damage with most of its belly ripped off. According to FlightRadar24, it struck an airport instrumentation landing system light before coming to rest roughly 300 meters beyond the runway.

The first of the 24 Airbus A330 aircraft operated by Korean Air will be removed from service on Tuesday. They will be replaced with new aircraft that undergo a routine inspection after a scheduled major overhaul as a preventative measure.

There have been a fairly long list of fatal incidents involving Korean Air over the years. In 1997, 228 people died when one of their planes crashed. In 1999, they lost everyone on a 747-400 cargo plane in a ground accident. Thanks to no further serious accidents since then, Korean Air has survived its fair share of disasters.