On smaller aircraft the landing gear can be manually released and allowed to gravity drop, but I’m not sure if that’s the case with a 737. With regards to redundant systems, I would think much of the hydraulic routing would be independent between the gear and flaps, and they typically follow different routing paths to avoid the potential for simultaneous damage. Particularly in critical areas like the rotor burst zone near the engines. I also cannot fathom how a bird strike could do this much damage to a 737. None of it makes any sense.

Right? And so many answers and facts are all spelled out in his concise, analytical report. Flight origin, schematic of the hydraulics, a discussion of the redundancies built into the controls, including the electric motor redundancy if the hydraulics fail, a discussion of smoke in the cabin and possible origin, , a short video on manually dropping the gear on a 737, a discussion of the placement of the towers, pictures of the likely bird strike, pictures and a discussion of the flaps, stabilizers and engine reversers....

From his analysis, it leads me back to my comment on cockpit resource management. The flight recorders will tell the tale.

Best
Les

Exactly right, OldE. He mentions it at least twice, wondering what the hurry is to get on the ground after the bird strike. He even briefly speculates that there might have been a second bird strike which leads to a few thoughts on smoke in the cabin vs smoke in the cockpit.

Watched a Sky news interview (on Youtube yesterday) of a retired 737 captain who raised the point that you can "release" the gear and gravity drop it. He questioned why not. Really need the CVR on this one. Suspect they had some sort of explosive hyd failure and as mentioned above figured gear down no brakes (and no effective reverser) was more dangerous than belly. No time to foam runway. Looks like they were having control issues so they went straight in. No flaps? Either CRM or no ability to drop them. Landing speed seemed high but hard to tell from the video.

Landed long, landed fast, no flaps, no gear.

One other possibility but I'm not going to speculate. it will come out early in the investigation if true.

He certainly shows a layman like me how complex flight systems are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6w3Ax96FjBQ
Interesting theory by CNN's aviation analyst that they were 2 engines out and landed in low drag config because they had to glide back to the runway.
Fair amt of speculation on some pilot forums that right engine was running but not producing power and that perhaps pilots mistakenly shut down the wrong engine, leading to no power at fairly low altitude and no time to restart. Would explain the short time to landing and the odd config.

The ILS "instrument landing system" Has many components. The 2 largest being the Localizer antenna (which is at the far end of the runway, and exposed) and the Glidepath, which normally is in a small "shack" beside the runway.

Cheers

The pilot did an amazing belly landing, they may have had better results if not for that building…

Past studies have shown a confluence of multiple events need to occur to bring down a modern plane.
The last factor was a wall at the end of the runway when the plane was already on the ground intact.

The obstruction at the end of the runway was a berm upon which the antenna for the instrument landing system was mounted. The aircraft hit the berm and exploded. There was a wall further along at the perimeter of the airfield, but the aircraft did not make it that far.
This is covered in the video by Jaun Brown.
I suppose if they had managed to set it down on the threshold, they might have managed to scrub off enough speed, but ground effect kept them off for half the length of the runway.

Best
Les

The explosion looked like they still had a lot of fuel on board.

This is a little confusing; an eyewitness saw flaps and gear down as the 737 flew thru the bird strike on initial approach, but on the second approach, flaps and landing gear are up. Big question is why, if the plane was on landing approach, did they decide to go around instead of just completing the landing.

Time will tell.

Another interesting factoid, apparently a power cable to the flight data recorder was damaged, so the South Korean authorities couldn't recover the data and the box has been sent to the NTSB in Washington DC for data recovery!

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Almost sounds like they forgot to put the gear down after the go around.

I think this is an interesting read that covers the bolded bit.
https://how.complexsystems.fail/

So many unanswered questions. I watched the Juan Brown debrief and it looks like they had flaps and gear down in a stabilized approach when they took the bird strike. If you are already on glide path with good approach speed why not just set her down?? Even if it feels like a carrier landing it sounds higher percentage than a go around with a compromised engine.

No, the crew chose to go around, pull up gear and flaps, make a high speed impossible turn and belly land it @160 knots with only 1/2 the runway remaining?? Maybe not the best plan. I'll wait for the flight data and voice recorder but right now it looks like the crew shat their pants with the bird strike and made a series of "off procedure" moves that got them killed.

50 tons at 160:ish knots. That is lot of energy to dissipate ... that berm made zero difference. There is a brick wall and road behind it. It is unlikely they would live. My guess is that pilots got spooked by both engines stopping, did a quick 180 and tried to ditch it as soon as possible. Somewhere, procedures were missed.

I don't understand the wheels up landing. The video describes how even losing both engines wouldn't stop the brake's hydraulics from working so why not drop the landing gear even if you have to do it manually?

I suspect this is ultimately where we end up. Bird strike, crew panics and cleans up the aircraft for a go-around, forgot to lower flaps and gear on their second landing. Or maybe they were losing control of the aircraft. Nothing else makes any logical sense.

One question I’d like to see answered - what was the state of the aircraft after the bird strike? Because if they lost both engines I very strongly doubt a 737 on final (low and slow) could execute a teardrop turn and get back to the runway. It’s not exactly a Piper Cub. So if they were down to one engine INOP post bird strike, everything after that point is pilot error. The 737 is an ETOPS aircraft and would still be flyable with one engine, there’s no reason they couldn’t have executed a relatively normal landing post bird-strike.