South Korea says the initial data was extracted from the cockpit recorder of Jeju Air | Aviation news

Officials say all 179 victims of the deadliest accident on South Korean soil have been identified.

Investigators looking into the fatal crash of Jeju Air Flight 2216 in South Korea have recovered initial data from one of the plane’s black boxes, officials said.

Joo Jong-wan, vice minister of civil aviation, said on Wednesday that the “initial extraction” of data from the cockpit voice recorder had been completed.

“Based on this preliminary data, we plan to start converting it to an audio format,” Joo said.

Jeju Air Flight 2216 crashed at Muan International Airport, about 290 km southwest of Seoul, on Sunday morning, killing 179 of the 181 people on board.

The crash was the worst air disaster ever on South Korean soil and the deadliest accident involving a South Korean airline since a Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 crashed into a Guam hill in 1997, killing 228 people.

Aviation experts have outlined a number of possible causes and contributing factors to Sunday’s disaster, including a bird strike, mechanical failure, pilot error and the presence of a hardened embankment less than 300 meters from the end of the runway.

The Boeing 737-800 landed on its belly on the runway, without landing gear deployed, shortly after the pilot reported a bird strike to air traffic control, before sliding into a concrete embankment and bursting into flames.

South Korean authorities, aided by investigators from Boeing and the United States’ National Transportation Safety Board, focused their initial inquiries on the embankment, which some aviation experts said should have been placed further from the runway or built with softer materials.

South Korean officials also announced Wednesday that they had confirmed the identities of all 179 victims amid complaints from grieving families about the timeframe for identifying and releasing the bodies.

Authorities said identifying the remains was a slow and difficult process because of the damage to the bodies in the crash.