According to South Korean officials on Saturday, the black boxes of a Boeing aircraft that crashed in South Korea last month ceased recording approximately four minutes before to the incident, perhaps making it more difficult to determine what caused the tragedy that claimed 179 lives.
According to the South Korean Transportation Ministry, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board determined after examining the devices that the flight data and cockpit voice recorders both malfunctioned approximately four minutes prior to the collision.
On December 29, the landing gear on Jeju Air’s Boeing 737-800 failed to deploy, causing it to slip off a runway in the South Korean town of Muan. It crashed into a concrete structure and caught fire, killing all but two of the 181 persons on board.
Initially examining the black boxes, South Korean officials found that some of the data was missing and referred the devices to the NTSB for further analysis. The reasons behind the devices’ inability to record data during the previous four minutes were not immediately apparent, according to the ministry of transportation.
We intend to do everything in our power to ascertain the cause of the accident, the ministry stated in a statement. While data from the flight data recorder (FDR) and cockpit voice recorder (CVR) are essential in accident investigations, these investigations are carried out by looking at and analyzing a variety of information sources.
According to South Korean authorities, the pilot attempted an emergency landing after air traffic controllers alerted him to potential bird strikes two minutes prior to the aircraft sending out a distress signal confirming the occurrence of a bird strike.
After analysts connected the high death toll to the localizer system at Muan airport, the structure struck by the plane as it crashed, South Korean officials also promised to increase airport safety. Located in a dirt-covered concrete building on a raised embankment, the localizer was a system of antennae used to direct airplanes during landings. This has sparked debate over whether lighter materials that would have broken more readily in an impact should have been used to build the construction.
Through the Associated Press, by Kim Tong-hyung
