Advertisement
South Korea says Jeju Air jet black boxes stopped recording 4 minutes before crash
The transport ministry said it would investigate the cause of the data loss during the disaster that killed 179 people
Reading Time:2 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
22
The black boxes holding the flight data and cockpit voice recorders for the crashed Jeju Air flight that left 179 people dead stopped recording four minutes before the disaster, South Korea’s transport ministry said on Saturday.
Advertisement
The Boeing 737-800 was flying from Thailand to Muan, South Korea, on December 29 carrying 181 passengers and crew when it belly-landed at the Muan airport and exploded in a fireball after slamming into a concrete barrier.
“The analysis revealed that both the CVR and FDR data were not recorded during the four minutes leading up to the aircraft’s collision with the localiser,” the transport ministry said in a statement, referring to the two recording devices.
The localiser is a barrier at the end of the runway that helps with aircraft landings and was blamed for exacerbating the crash’s severity.
The damaged flight data recorder had been deemed unrecoverable for data extraction by South Korean authorities, who sent it to the United States for analysis at the US National Transportation Safety Board laboratory.
Advertisement
Advertisement