Hello everyone, welcome to “Current Affairs Digest”. I am Jin Ran. First of all, I wish all the audience a happy new year and good health for the whole family. Please continue to support us in the new year, subscribe to our channel, like, comment, and share with your loved ones.
Today’s focus: Three major aircraft accidents on the same day – Decoding the South Korean air disaster; Two Boeing aircraft incidents – The hidden troubles behind; Israeli military announces victory in Gaza – Special forces deep in Syria’s secret war; Ukrainian military’s new year offensive to target Russian mainland.
Singer Cui Jian has a famous line in a song: “It’s not that I don’t understand, the world changes fast.” The following line is an accurate reflection of the real world. As we are about to bid farewell to 2024 and welcome the new year, the world keeps moving at a fast pace, leaving people feeling speechless in these final days of 2024.
In the past few days, at least four aviation accidents have occurred globally. Firstly, a plane in Azerbaijan was shot down by Russia. The details of this incident, including the entire process of the plane being hit by a Russian missile, have been revealed in a video on another platform last Friday. Subsequent incidents were related to landing gear problems, with the most tragic being the South Korean 737 air disaster.
On the morning of December 29, South Korea’s Jeju Air flight 2216 made an emergency landing at the Woonan International Airport in South Jeolla Province, resulting in the loss of all 179 passengers on board except for two. The Boeing 737-800 charter flight by a travel agency had just returned from a 4-day holiday trip to Bangkok, Thailand. The passengers ranged from a 3-year-old child to a 78-year-old adult. Tragically, a family of nine was onboard to celebrate the 80th birthday of their patriarch.
One might have noticed that the plane landed without its landing gear deployed, which was the main cause of this horrific accident. Often, such disasters are the result of a series of seemingly random events. The plane was initially warned by the air traffic control center about birds in the vicinity while approaching the airport, and soon after, it collided with a flock of birds. This led to a fire when a bird entered one of the plane’s turbofan engines, causing engine failure and subsequent complications with the electronic system preventing the landing gear from deploying.
During the 5 minutes after the bird collision, the plane made a smooth belly landing. Initially, everything seemed fine, but the plane soon deviated from the runway, and a concrete wall outside the runway became its doom. Since the plane had not dumped its fuel, the impact with the wall resulted in a catastrophic explosion, claiming the lives of all the 179 passengers and crew on board.
Two crew members survived by sitting in the rear of the plane, as it is known that passengers in the tail section have a 40% higher survival rate in major air accidents.
Unexpectedly, on the same day, two more major aircraft landing accidents occurred. What’s more shocking isn’t just the landing gear problems but the fact that two identical model aircraft incidents happened on the same day.
On Sunday, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines flight KL1204 from Norway to Amsterdam in the Netherlands suffered a landing gear failure like the recently crashed South Korean plane, also a Boeing 737-800, and was forced to land at the Torp Airport in Norway. Luckily, this aircraft ended up on the lawn after skidding off the runway, leaving all passengers and crew unharmed.
As the saying goes, trouble comes in threes, but the end of 2024 proved to be eerie as another flight in Canada had an accident due to landing gear issues on the same day.
On December 29, as a plane belonging to Air Canada was landing at the Halifax Airport in Canada, its landing gear was damaged, causing the fuselage to tilt, and the wing scraping the runway sparked a large fire. Surprisingly, a passenger inside the aircraft filmed the scene, showcasing remarkable composure and filming skills.
One might wonder if this Canadian plane was a Boeing aircraft as well. Surprisingly, it wasn’t. Reports indicate that this Air Canada Express flight used the Bombardier Q400 aircraft. The crew and 73 passengers escaped unharmed, with the only inconvenience being that their luggage may take an extra two days to be returned.
With three aircraft incidents in a single day, it was indeed a terrifying occurrence. In fact, just a day before these three incidents, there was another scary episode.
On December 28, a Delta Air Lines plane was taxiing for takeoff when the airport’s air traffic controller urgently halted a Lime Airways aircraft that was taxiing into the same runway. The live video footage showed that had the Lime aircraft continued, it would have been a disastrous runway incursion incident. Watching the live video at the time, pay attention to the air traffic controller’s emergency call and the earlier instructions given.
Boeing planes involved in two major accidents in one day have sparked various discussions about aircraft manufacturing quality, highlighting a related issue. According to reports, Boeing’s new CEO, Oatberg, issued a memorandum to employees in October, stating that Boeing was facing significant challenges that required a serious understanding of the company’s situation.
“To revitalize the company, we must make tough choices, implement structural adjustments to maintain competitiveness, and fulfill long-term commitments to customers.” One important step in this restructuring involved the dissolution of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) department.
What is DEI? It is the most famous “politically correct” department in the U.S. that promotes diversity, fairness, and inclusivity. An engineer at Boeing who resigned earlier this year posted online, indicating that for the sake of political correctness, and to display so-called racial equality and diversity, Boeing hired minority personnel without professional skills to work as engineers. Boeing recently disbanded this politically correct department, laying off all departments that focused on gender equality and diversity.
Some have expressed their disappointment that the current generation of Boeing engineers and frontline workers featured in a documentary on the company are dismayed by the company’s current problems, noting a lack of the meticulousness and pride of past times. The DEI department has been widespread across almost all major companies in the U.S. and the West. Therefore, the root cause behind the December 29 air disaster may indeed lie in the shadow cast by years of left-wing advocacy for “political correctness”.
With aircraft accidents continuing, some are starting to ponder how to avoid tragic incidents where passengers and planes go down together from a design perspective. Thus, a suggestion emerged – designing a type of aircraft where the passenger cabin and the main fuselage can detach.
As 2024 comes to an end, Israel announced a victory in Gaza just before the year-end. On December 29, the Israeli military released a video indicating that with the surrender of Hamas’ final battalion to Israel, all 36 regular battalions of Hamas in Gaza have been mostly eliminated.
Throughout this year, it has been evident that Israel has been systematically dismantling and destroying all external forces of Iran. First, Hamas, then Hezbollah, and following the sudden collapse of Assad, the Israeli military took over all of the Golan Heights and decisively destroyed almost all of Syria’s chemical weapons and long-range attack capabilities. Recent reports revealed that Israeli forces conducted a secret mission, with hundreds of soldiers deep inside Syria’s interior destroying an Iranian missile manufacturing and research facility.
Moreover, a massive airstrike involving hundreds of fighter jets against the Houthi rebels was declared by Israel as an operation to sever Iran’s final interference. Experts predict that with Trump pledging support for Israel’s “counterterrorism war” against Iran, Israel may launch the ultimate battle against Iran after clearing out all of Iran’s affiliates in 2025, marking significant changes in the Middle East for the coming year.
On December 30, 187 Ukrainian soldiers and two civilians who were captured by Russian forces on the frontline were exchanged with Russia. They were able to return to Ukraine, reunite with their families before the year-end, and receive their salaries from the time of their capture as per the Ukrainian military’s announcement.
President Biden announced on December 30 an additional nearly $2.5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine to help them resist Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure and strengthen military defense in eastern Ukraine. Zelensky expressed deep gratitude to the U.S. for the new aid, emphasizing the need to move towards peace through strength and achieve peaceful common goals in 2025.
However, reports suggest that the Ukrainian military may launch a new year offensive in the next week, engaging in a large-scale attack on another direction of Russia’s mainland. This would expand the strategic front beyond the Russian-controlled Kurzsk region, indicating a new phase in the Russia-Ukraine conflict for 2025. Such speculations have even caught the attention of Russian media, with warnings to be prepared as Ukraine is on the move.
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