The aviation world ends the year with one of the weeks with the most serious incidents in recent years
What would the Canary Islands be without airplanes? As residents of an archipelago, we are well aware of the importance of this means of transport, not only for our mobility, but also for maintaining the economic engine of our community: tourism. That is why recent events in the world of aviation, despite the distance, are not foreign.
There have been four accidents in the aviation world in the last week, most of them fatal and for various reasons.
The first of these occurred on December 22 in Brazil, where a plane with 10 people on board crashed in the tourist city of Gramado after hitting a chimney and falling on a furniture store. The accident caused the death of all 10 occupants and 15 people were taken to hospital for smoke inhalation.
The second occurred on December 25, when an Azerbaijan Airlines plane with 67 people on board crashed outside the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan, killing 38 passengers and injuring 29.
However, this accident was for very different reasons than those that can be expected in this type of incident, since the plane was mistakenly shot down by Russian missiles during an operation in which they were repelling an attack by Ukrainian drones.
The damage to the aircraft's fuselage fuelled this theory, which was confirmed a few days later and for which Vladimir Putin himself apologised to the President of Azerbaijan, describing the downing as a "tragic incident".
The third and fourth occurred this weekend. On Sunday, December 29, a Boeing 737-300 of the South Korean company Jeju Air crashed after landing without its landing gear deployed at Muan airport.
The plane landed without its landing gear, so it slid down the runway without activating the braking systems and crashed into a wall located at the end of the runway, causing a large fireball and destroying the aircraft.
The impact caused the death of 179 of the 181 passengers on board, leaving only two survivors. According to initial investigations, the landing gear failure could have been caused by a bird strike.
The moment of impact was captured by one of the airport's cameras and has reached the international media, which has reported the biggest air tragedy in South Korea and the one that has left the most victims so far this year.
The latest incident occurred in Canada, although fortunately it did not cause any casualties. It also occurred on Sunday, when an Air Canada plane suffered a problem with its landing gear and slid across the runway at Halifax airport, causing a fire and causing panic among the passengers, who were evacuated by the airport authorities.
