7 in 10 flights delayed after NOTAM issued
Ministry's 'heavy traffic' explanation draws skepticism
![Jeju International Airport [Yonhap]](https://wimg.heraldcorp.com/news/cms/2026/10/21/rcv.YNA.20260712.PYH2026071204390005600_P1.jpg)
Nearly half of all flights operating out of Jeju International Airport were delayed on Friday, and 10 were diverted to Incheon International Airport — with the bulk of the disruptions concentrated in the window between the issuance of a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) for the presidential jet and its actual takeoff. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport has maintained that the presidential aircraft had only a limited impact on operations, but the People Power Party says the delay rate during that period was more than four times higher than at the same time the previous week and is calling for a full accounting.
Data obtained from Korea Airports Corporation by People Power Party lawmaker Jung Seok-jun, a member of the National Assembly's Land, Infrastructure and Transport Committee, showed that 237 of 512 flights — 46.3 percent — operating at Jeju airport on Friday were delayed. The average delay was 40 minutes, and 44,639 passengers were affected.
Breaking down the delays by length, 101 flights were delayed by less than 30 minutes, 96 by between 30 minutes and one hour, 29 by between one and one and a half hours, six by between one and a half and two hours, and five by more than two hours. Forty flights were delayed by more than an hour.
Ten flights were diverted to Incheon after the cascading delays pushed their arrivals past their destination airports' nighttime curfew. Nine had been bound for Gimpo and one for Gimhae, carrying a combined 1,759 passengers. Those flights averaged a delay of one hour and 26 minutes. An Air Busan flight from Jeju to Gimhae was delayed by two hours and 41 minutes before being diverted to Incheon.
The scale of the disruption stood out sharply against the same day the previous week. On Oct. 9, 78 of 514 flights — 15.2 percent — at Jeju airport were delayed, with an average delay of 24 minutes. Although the total number of flights differed by only two, the number of delayed flights on Friday was 237 — roughly three times higher. The average delay was 16 minutes longer. There were no diversions on Oct. 9, compared with 10 on Friday.
According to the NOTAM, the Air Force requested two restricted windows at Jeju airport on Friday for the presidential aircraft: 4:45 p.m. to 5:25 p.m. and 7:50 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. The jet ultimately took off at 9:22 p.m., 52 minutes after the second window was scheduled to end.
An analysis of Korea Airports Corporation data showed that between the start of the first NOTAM window at 4:45 p.m. and the presidential jet's actual takeoff at 9:22 p.m., 109 of 143 flights — 76.2 percent — that operated during that period were delayed. The average delay was 46 minutes.
During the same hours on Oct. 9, by contrast, 27 of 151 flights — 17.9 percent — were delayed, with an average delay of 23 minutes. The delay rate on Friday was 4.3 times higher than the week before, and the average delay was twice as long.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport has said the presidential jet's operations had only a limited effect on the delays, attributing the disruptions largely to cascading delays caused by increased flight volume. Critics, however, argue that given the stark difference in delay figures compared with a week earlier — when flight numbers were nearly identical — the impact of the presidential aircraft's operations warrants closer scrutiny.
"Safe operations of the presidential aircraft must of course be guaranteed, but in the process more than 44,000 citizens were inconvenienced by delays and more than 1,700 had to disembark at Incheon instead of their intended destination," Jung said. "When the data from the airport corporation shows a delay rate during the restricted window that exceeds four times the normal level, trying to brush it off with a single line about 'limited impact' is nothing short of burying one's head in the sand."
Jung urged the ministry and Korea Airports Corporation to address the allegations with data rather than explanations, and called on them to overhaul advance notification, coordination and extension-announcement procedures to minimize the impact on commercial flights during state aircraft operations, and to put in place measures to prevent a recurrence.
mp1256@heraldcorp.com
