Hyeon-Jeong Korea Line | 1980s

(TOP)
Airline - Hyeon-Jeong Korea Line
Aircraft - Hawker Siddeley HS.121 Trident 1E | HL3587
Delivered to British International Airlines, 1965
Transferred to Royal Airways, 1974
Stored at London Heathrow, 1979
Sold to Hyeon-Jeong Korea Line, 1980
Stored at Busan Gimhae International Airport, 1992
Scrapped at Busan Gimhae International Airport, 1993
Livery - Standard 1971
Country - Republic of Korea

(BOTTOM)
Airline - Hyeon-Jeong Korea Line
Aircraft - Douglas DC-8-63 | HL4439
Delivered to Hyeon-Jeong Korea Line, 1985
Crashed at Anchorage, 1991
Livery - Standard 1971
Country - Republic of Korea

After the privatization of Korea's flag carrier in 1969, an opportunity was presented to form a competitor. Headed by the Hyeon-Jeong Yeogam corporation, a group of companies was formed, establishing Hyeon-Jeong Korea Line in 1971. The airline was initially 54% owned by HJY, and 46% by six other companies. It began flying with a fleet of Boeing 737-200s and various propliners. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, HJKL purchased part of the Hawker Siddeley Trident fleet being retired by Royal Airways, including HL3587. The Tridents operated mostly domestic and Japanese routes due to their lack of range.

While HJKL had purchased smaller DC-8 variants in the early 1980s, the DC-8-63 was the largest single-aisle aircraft operated by the airline. The first, HL4439, was delivered in 1985. The largest DC-8s were used mostly on East and Southeast Asian routes (like Bangkok, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc) and to the United States via Anchorage. In 1991, HL4439, operating flight HJ036 from Seoul to New York via Anchorage, collided with the water of Cook Inlet due to a navigation error in adverse meteorological conditions on approach to Anchorage Ted Stevens International Airport, killing all aboard. Almost 180 passengers and crew were killed in the accident.

The crash of flight 36 was the fourth and final in a series of fatal accidents between 1989 and 1991, and remains the worst in the airline's history. It prompted a major rebranding to distance the company from the death toll of those three years, and in 1992 the carrier reinvented itself as simply Korea Line.