Black boxes from the plane crash in South Korea failed to record the last 4 minutes, officials say
The black boxes of the Boeing jet that crashed in South Korea last month stopped recording about four minutes before the crash, South Korean officials said Saturday, which could complicate investigations into the cause of the disaster that killed 179 people.
After analyzing the devices, the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) concluded that both the flight data and cockpit voice recorders stopped working about four minutes before the crash, South Korea’s transport ministry said.
A Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 skidded off a runway in the South Korean city of Muan on Dec. 29 after its landing gear failed to open, hit a concrete structure and burst into flames, killing all but two of the 181 people on board.
After an initial analysis of the black boxes, South Korean officials sent the devices to the NTSB for further examination after discovering that some of the 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 accident investigations, 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 accidents.” it is stated in the press release of the ministry.
After a Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 crashed off a runway in South Korea on Sunday, an investigation is underway to determine what happened. One of the main questions in the investigation, according to former Chief Engineer Failure Analyst Eugen Abramovici, is why the plane did not open the landing gear during the emergency landing.
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.
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.
South Korea’s acting president, Choi Sang-mok, ordered emergency safety inspections of all Boeing 737-800 planes operated by the country’s airlines after the Jeju Air crash killed almost all passengers.
