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13-01-2025
SEOUL: Flight data and cockpit voice recorders from the South Korean passenger plane that crashed last month stopped recording four minutes before the disaster, the country’s transport ministry has said.
The crash of the Jeju Air flight killed 179 people, making it the deadliest air accident on Korean soil. Two cabin crew members were the only survivors.
Investigators had hoped that data on the recorders would provide insights about the crucial moments before the tragedy.
The ministry said it would analyze what caused the “black boxes” to stop recording.
The recorders were originally examined in South Korea, the ministry said.
When the data was found to be missing, they were taken to the US and analyzed by American safety regulators.
The plane was travelling from Bangkok on 29 December when it crash-landed at Muan International Airport and slid into a wall off the end of the runway, bursting into flames.
Sim Jai-dong, a former transport ministry accident investigator, told media that the loss of data from the crucial final minutes was surprising and suggested that all power, including back-up, could have been cut.
Many questions remain unanswered. Investigators have been looking at the role that a bird strike or weather conditions may have played.
They have also focused on why the Boeing 737-800 did not have its landing gear down when it hit the runway.
On 30th December, last year nearly 180 people died after a plane crashed as it was landing in South Korea on the morning of Sunday 29 December.
Harrowing video footage shows the Jeju Air plane coming off the runway before colliding with a barrier and bursting into flames at Muan International Airport.
The plane, which was returning from Bangkok, Thailand, was carrying 181 people 179 of whom were killed. Two crew members were rescued from the wreckage.
Authorities are investigating the cause of the crash, with fire officials indicating a bird strike and bad weather. However experts have warned the crash could have been caused by a number of factors.
Flight 7C2216 was a Boeing 737-800 operated by Jeju Air, Korea’s most popular budget airline.
Air traffic control authorized the plane to land at Muan International Airport at about 08:54 just three minutes before issuing a warning about bird activity in the area.
At 08:59, the pilot reported that the plane had struck a bird, declaring “mayday mayday, mayday” and “bird strike, bird strike, go-around”. The pilot then aborted the original landing and requested permission to land from the opposite direction.
Air traffic control authorized the alternative landing at 09:01 and at 09:02 the plane made contact with the ground, coming down at roughly the halfway point of the 2,800m runway.
One video appears to show the plane touching down without using its wheels or any other landing gear. It skidded down the runway, overshot it and crashed into a concrete wall, before erupting into flames.
A witness told the South Korean news agency Yonhap they had heard a “loud bang” followed by a “series of explosions”.
Videos from the scene show the plane ablaze with smoke billowing into the sky. The first of two survivors was rescued from the crash at about 09:23, with the second being rescued from inside the tail section of the plane at about 09:50.
The flight and voice recorders from the plane were recovered, though reports say that the former was damaged and that data from the devices could take up to a month to decode. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
