Travelers shun budget carriers in droves after series of disasters

A Jeju Air check-in counter remains empty on Dec. 31, two days after the airplane crash that killed 179 people at Muan International Airport in South Jeolla. [NEWS1]

 
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Cho Min-seung, a 30-year-old researcher based in Seoul, recently canceled her Jeju Air ticket to Tokyo amid anxiety about the safety of the budget airline after a series of aircraft accidents involving low-cost carriers (LCCs). 
 
“We instead purchased a ticket from a flagship carrier, which cost me 200,000 won [$138.45] more,” Cho said. “I’d rather pay more. We really can’t feel relieved about the aircraft operated by budget carriers.”
 

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Kim Ji-min, a 27-year-old designer based in Seoul, also feels stuck at a crossroads on whether to cancel her Air Busan airline ticket to Fukuoka, which got after canceling a Jeju Air ticket.
 
“I realized that the Boeing 737-800 model behind the Jeju Air crash was involved in many big accidents across the globe,” Kim said.
 
“So I literally searched and bought an Air Busan ticket that does not run on that specific Boeing model, but right after the purchase, the fire case occurred in an Air Busan aircraft.”
 
The number of passengers to Korea’s six major LCCs — Jeju Air, Jin Air, T’way Air, Eastar Jet, Air Busan and Air Seoul — which totaled 1.36 million between Dec. 23 and 29, the week before the Jeju Air crash, fell 15 percent to 1.16 million between Jan. 6 and 12, according to data from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. It slightly rose to 1.27 million won in the week from Jan. 20–26. 
 
Notably, the number of Jeju Air passengers plunged 34 percent during the same period.
 

Officials from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport conduct an on-site inspection on Feb. 3 to determine the cause of the fire at Gimhae International Airport in Busan. [SONG BONG-GEUN]

The trend is jeopardizing the profit and reputations of Korea's budget airlines, which have enjoyed solid growth in sales and number of passengers amid booming travel sentiment since the Covid-19 pandemic.
 
The operators hit a snag after a Jeju Air aircraft crashed while landing at Muan International Airport, claiming the lives of 179 passengers. Only a month later, a massive fire broke out in an Air Busan aircraft preparing for takeoff apparently started from a portable battery charger at Gimhae International Airport, injuring seven people.
Though the causes of the fatal incidents have not been fully determined, consumers speculate that weak maintenance capabilities and excessive flight frequency were primary contributors to the accidents.
 
LCCs normally minimize fares by cutting operating expenses by using secondhand aircraft and offering basic amenities.
 
The average monthly airplane operation time for Jeju Air was 418 hours as of the end of September last year, while T’way for 386 hours, significantly higher than Korean Air’s 355 hours and Asiana Airlines’ 335 hours, even considering that budget carriers mostly run shorter routes.
 
In fact, the Air Busan aircraft that caught a fire in late January, an Airbus A321-231, turned out to have operated 17 times in the 48 hours leading up to the incident.
 
Lack of maintenance personnel is also being blamed.
 
Ten discount carriers in Korea had a total of 1,664 maintenance staff as of 2023, according to the Transport Ministry, less than half those employed by Korean Air and Asiana, which totaled 3,963. This translates to Jeju Air only having 11.2 staff per airplane and Air Busan 8.8 per jet while Korean Air has 18.6 and Asiana 16 per aircraft.
 
Experts, however, pinpoint the need to inspect the overall ecosystem of low-cost carriers in order not to lose out on safety.
 
“LCCs often buy secondhand aircraft, but we can’t blindly blame the capabilities of their maintenance system or pilots as the cause of the accidents,” said aeronautical science professor Kim Kwang-il of Silla University.
 
“The domestic LCCs, currently, compete with each other only on price, which inevitably makes them rely on reducing raw costs,” Kim added. “Securing a stable client portfolio to have a diversified and healthy profit structure is urgent for safety.”

BY SARAH CHEA [chea.sarah@joongang.co.kr]