The black boxes of the Boeing 737-800 operated by Jeju Air that crashed in South Korea last month stopped recording about four minutes before the accident, South Korean officials said on Saturday. The announcement possibly complicates the investigations of the crash that killed 179 people of the total 181 on board.
South Korean investigators said that the pilots were warned by air traffic controllers of possible bird strikes. The warning was made two minutes before the aircraft issued a distress signal confirming that a bird strike had occurred. The pilot had then attempted an emergency landing.
Cockpit voice recorders and flight data stopped working four minutes before crash
The South Korean Transportation Ministry said that the US National Transportation Safety Board concluded after its analysis that both the cockpit voice recorders and flight data stopped working about four minutes before the crash.
On December 29, the Boeing jetliner skidded off a runway in South Korea’s Muan as its landing gear failed to deploy. The plane then slammed into a concrete structure and burst into flames, killing 179 people.
After an initial examination, South Korean officials sent the devices to the NTSB as they found some of the data missing. The transportation ministry said it wasn’t immediately clear why the devices failed to record data in the last four minutes.
“Data from the CVR (cockpit voice recorder) and FDR (flight data recorder) are crucial in investigating accidents, but such investigations are conducted through the examination and analysis of various sources of information, and we plan to do our utmost to determine the cause of the accident,” the ministry’s statement reads.
South Korea pledges to improve airport safety
South Korean officials have also pledged to improve airport safety after experts linked the high death toll to Muan airport’s localiser system, the structure hit by the aircraft as it crashed.
The localiser, a set of antennas designed to guide aircraft during landings, was housed in a concrete structure covered with dirt on an elevated embankment.
This has raised questions about whether the structure should have been built with lighter materials that would break more easily upon impact.
(With inputs from AP)
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