Black boxes are the passenger jetliner that crashed in South Korea last month, killing 179 people stopped recording about four minutes before the crash, South Korean officials said Saturday.
After analyzing the tools, the The US National Transportation Safety Board ended that both the 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, crashing into a concrete structure and bursting into flames, a All but two of the 181 people on board were killed.
Ahn Young-joon / AP
South Korean officials sent the black boxes to the NTSB for a closer examination after discovering that some of the data was missing.
The transport ministry said it was not immediately clear why the machines did not record data in the last four minutes.
“Data from the CVR (cockpit voice recorder) and FDR (flight data recorder) are essential in accident investigations, but such investigations are carried out through the examination and analysis of various sources of information, and we intend to do our best to determine the cause. about the accident,” the ministry said in a statement.
South Korean investigators have said air traffic controllers warned the pilot of possible bird strikes two minutes before the plane sent out 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 737-800 aircraft operated by the country's airlines – dozens of planes in total – following the crash.
South Korean officials have also pledged to improve airport safety after experts linked the high death toll to Muan airport's localizer system, the structure the plane hit when it crashed. The localizer, a set of antennas designed to guide aircraft during landing, was in a dirt-covered concrete structure on a raised embankment. This has raised questions about whether the structure should be built with lighter materials that break more easily on impact.
