Black boxes from passenger plane that crashed in South Korea last month that killed 179 people stopped filming about four minutes before the crash, South Korean officials said Saturday.
After analyzing the device, The US National Transportation Safety Board concluded that both the flight data and cockpit voice recorders stopped working about four minutes before the crash, South Korea’s transport ministry said.
The Boeing 737-800 operated by Jeju Air skidded off the runway in the South Korean city of Muan on December 29 after its landing gear failed to open, struck a concrete structure and burst into flames, killing all but two of the 181 people on board.
Ahn Young-joon / AP
South Korean officials also sent the black boxes to the NTSB for further examination after discovering that some data was missing.
The Ministry of Transport said it was not 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 the investigation of accidents, but such investigations are conducted by examining and analyzing various sources of information, and we plan to do our best to determine the cause of the accident,” it said. in the press release of the ministry.
South Korean investigators said air traffic controllers warned the pilot of possible bird strikes two minutes before the aircraft issued a distress signal confirming a bird strike, after which the pilot attempted an emergency landing.
After the crash, authorities immediately ordered an inspection of all 737-800 planes operated by the country’s airlines – dozens of planes in total – after the crash.
South Korean officials also vowed to improve security at the airport after experts linked the high death toll to Muan Airport’s localizer system, the structure the plane hit when it crashed. The localizer, an array of antennas designed to guide aircraft during landing, was housed in a concrete structure covered with soil on an elevated embankment. This raised questions about whether the structure should have been built with lighter materials that would break more easily on impact.
