The Globe and Mail reports in its Tuesday edition that the pilot flying the Jeju Air jet with 181 people on board was preparing to land in South Korea on Sunday when the control tower warned him about flocks of birds in the area. A New York Times dispatch to The Globe says that minutes later, at 8:59 a.m., the pilot reported a "bird strike" and "emergency." He told air traffic control at Muan airport that he would do "a go-around," but he did not go all the way around. Instead, just a minute later, the veteran pilot -- with nearly 7,000 flight hours in his career -- was approaching the runway from the opposite direction, from north to south. And three minutes later, at 9:03 a.m., his plane, Jeju Air Flight 7C2216, slammed into a concrete structure off the southern end of the runway in a ball of flames. All but two of the 181 people on board were killed, most of them South Koreans returning home after a Christmas vacation in Thailand. A central question has emerged among analysts: What happened during the four minutes between the pilot's urgent report of a bird strike and the plane's fatal crash? Footage of the Boeing 737-800 landing at the airport showed it skidding down the runway without its landing gear deployed.