The flight data and cockpit voice recorders on the Jeju Air jet that crashed on December 29 ceased recording roughly four minutes before the plane collided with a concrete structure at Muan airpprt in South Korea.
This happened when the pilot was attempting an emergency landing, the Transport Ministry reported on Saturday.
Authorities investigating the disaster that killed 179 people, the worst on South Korean soil, plan to analyse what caused the “black boxes” to stop recording, the ministry stated.
Analysis Of The Voice Recorder
The voice recorder was initially analysed in South Korea.
When the data was found to be missing, it was sent to a U.S. National Transportation Safety Board laboratory, the ministry said.
The damaged flight data recorder was taken to the United States for analysis in cooperation with the U.S. safety regulator, the ministry said.
Jeju Air 7C2216, which departed Bangkok for Muan in southwestern South Korea, belly-landed and overshot the regional airport’s runway, exploding into flames after hitting an embankment.
‘Bird Strike’
The Jeju Air flight’s pilots told air traffic control the aircraft had suffered a bird strike.
They declared an emergency about four minutes before it crashed into the embankment exploding in flames.
Two injured crew members, sitting in the tail section, were rescued.
Two minutes before the Mayday emergency call, air traffic control gave caution for “bird activity”.
Declaring an emergency, the pilots abandoned the landing attempt and initiated a go-around.
But instead of making a full go-about, the budget airline’s Boeing 737-800 jet took a sharp turn and approached the airport’s single runway from the opposite end, crash-landing without landing gear deployed.
Sim Jai-dong, a former Transport Ministry accident investigator, said the discovery of the missing data from the crucial final minutes was surprising and suggests all power including backup may have been cut, which is rare.
‘Other Data Available’
The Transport Ministry said that other data available would be used in the investigation and that it would ensure the probe is transparent and that information is shared with the victims’ families.
Some members of the victims’ families have said that the Transport ministry should not be taking the lead in the investigation.
They are of the view that that the investigation should involve independent experts including those recommended by the families.
(With inputs from Reuters)
