Jeju Air’s black boxes stopped recording before plane crash, South Korea says | Aviation news
The Ministry of Transport is investigating the cause of data loss after the biggest aviation disaster in the country’s history.
Black boxes containing flight data and cockpit voice recorders Boeing 737-800 aircraft of Jeju Air stopped filming about four minutes before the plane crash in South Korea in December, the country’s transport ministry said.
Jeju Air Flight 7C2216 was flying from Thailand to Muan International Airport in South Korea on December 29 when it landed on its belly, hit a concrete barrier and exploded, killing 179 of the 181 passengers and crew.
It was the worst plane crash ever on South Korean soil.
“Analysis revealed that CVR and FDR data were not recorded during the four minutes before the aircraft collided with the localizer,” South Korea’s transport ministry said Saturday, referring to the two recording devices.
The localizer is a barrier at the end of the runway that helps aircraft land and has been blamed for exacerbating the severity of the accident.
The voice recorder was initially analyzed in South Korea, and when data was found to be missing, it was sent to a US National Transportation Safety Board laboratory, the ministry said.
But the boxes containing clues about the last moments of the flight appear to have experienced data loss, leaving authorities to try to figure out what happened.
“There are plans to investigate the cause of the data loss during the ongoing accident investigation,” the ministry said.
Sim Jai-dong, a former accident investigator at the transport ministry, told the Reuters news agency that the discovery of the missing data was surprising and suggested that all power on the plane, including a backup, may have been cut, which is rare.
Investigators said the boxes were key to their investigation, but added they would not give up trying to find out why the crash happened.
Investigators pointed to bird strikes, a malfunctioning landing gear and a runway barrier as possible problems.
The pilot also warned of a bird strike before abandoning the first landing and circling.
But instead of completely relaxing, airplane Boeing 737-800 suddenly turned and approached one of the airport’s runways from the opposite end, when it crashed it landed without the landing gear activated.
This week, chief investigator Lee Seung-yeol told reporters that “feathers were found” in one of the plane’s removed engines, but cautioned that the bird strike did not cause immediate engine failure.
Authorities searched the offices at Muan Airport where the crash happened, the regional aviation office in the southwestern city and Jeju Air’s office in the capital, Seoul.
They too banned the CEO of Jeju Air from leaving the country.
As the investigation continues, Transport Minister Park Sang-woo offered to resign earlier this week, saying he felt “a great responsibility regarding this tragedy”.
