Jeju Air ‘black box’ data missing from last 4 minutes before crash, South Korean ministry tells Reuters
By Hyunjoo Jin and Jack Kim
SEOUL (Reuters) – The flight data and cockpit voice recorders of the Jeju Air jet that crashed on December 29 stopped recording about four minutes before the airliner hit a concrete structure at South Korea’s Muan airport, the transport ministry said on Saturday with.
Authorities investigating the disaster that killed 179 people, the worst on South Korean soil, plan to analyze what led the “black boxes” to stop recording, the ministry said in a statement.
The voice recorder was originally analyzed in South Korea and, when data was found to be missing, was sent to a US National Transportation Safety Board laboratory, the ministry said.
The ministry said the damaged flight data recorder was brought to the USA for analysis in cooperation with the US security authority.
Jeju Air 7C2216, which took off from the Thai capital Bangkok to Muan in southwestern South Korea, landed on its belly, overshot the regional airport’s runway and burst into flames after hitting an embankment.
The pilots informed air traffic control that the plane had suffered a bird strike about four minutes before impacting the embankment, which exploded into flames, and declared a state of emergency. Two injured crew members who were sitting in the stern area were rescued.
Two minutes before the Mayday emergency call, air traffic control warned of “bird activity.” The pilots declared a state of emergency, aborted the landing attempt and initiated a go-around.
But instead of fully taking off, the budget airline’s Boeing (NYSE:) 737-800 jet made a sharp turn and approached the airport’s only runway from the opposite end, crashing without its landing gear extended.
Sim Jai-dong, a former accident investigator at the Transportation Ministry, said the discovery of the missing data from the crucial final minutes was surprising and suggested that all power, including emergency power, may have been cut off, which is rare.
The Department of Transportation said other available data would be used in the investigation and that it would ensure the investigation was transparent and the information was passed on to the victims’ families.
Some family members of the victims said the Transportation Ministry should not take the lead in the investigation but should involve independent experts, including those recommended by the families.
The investigation into the crash also focused on the embankment designed to support the “Localiser” system to support aircraft landing, and also why it was constructed of such rigid material and so close to the end of the runway .
