The black boxes of airliner that crashed in South Korea Last month, 179 people were killed. The recording was stopped about four minutes before the accident, South Korean officials said Saturday.
After analyzing the devices, the Conclusion of the United States National Transportation Safety Board that flight data and cockpit voice recorders stopped working about four minutes before the crash, South Korea’s Transport Ministry said.
THE Boeing 737-800 operated by Jeju Air skidded off a runway in the South Korean city of Muan on December 29 after its landing gear failed to deploy, crashed into a concrete structure and caught fire, killing all but two people on board, except two.
Ahn Young-joon / AP
South Korean authorities also sent the black boxes to the NTSB for further review after discovering that some data was missing.
The Transport Ministry said it was not immediately clear why the devices had failed to record data over the past four minutes.
“CVR (cockpit voice recorder) and FDR (flight data recorder) data are crucial in accident investigations, but these investigations are conducted through the review and analysis of various data sources. ‘information, and we plan to do everything possible to determine the cause. of the accident,” the ministry said in a statement.
South Korean investigators said air traffic controllers warned the pilot of possible bird strikes two minutes before the plane issued a distress signal confirming a bird strike had occurred, after which the pilot attempted an emergency landing.
After the crash, authorities immediately ordered an inspection of all 737-800s operated by the country’s airlines – dozens of planes in total – following the crash.
South Korean officials also pledged to improve airport security after experts linked the high death toll to the tracking system at Muan Airport, the structure hit by the plane when it crashed . The localizer, a set of antennas designed to guide planes during landings, was housed in an earth-covered concrete structure on a raised embankment. This raised the question of whether the structure should have been built with lighter materials that would break more easily on impact.