Experts have successfully extracted data from one of the two flight logs recovered after the weekend plane crash in South Korea that killed 179, authorities in Seoul said Wednesday.
The data is from the voice recorder in the cockpit, according to the Ministry of Transport.
The second black box is still being investigated because it was damaged in Sunday's Boeing 737-800 crash at Muan Airport in the southwest of the country, he said.
Analysts hope that flight log data will provide further insight into the cause of the crash, which occurred as the plane landed from Bangkok.
However, the ministry warned that this would still take some time, according to the Yonhap news agency. The authority also announced that they had now identified 179 victims.
Local investigators and several US officials and representatives of the US aircraft manufacturer Boeing were working at the crash site.
A Jeju Air budget airline plane from South Korea landed without its landing gear, skidded across the runway and crashed into a 4-meter wall.
Only two crew members of the 181 people on board survived. Apart from two Thai nationals, they were all Koreans.
Before the crash landed there was an emergency call from the pilots reporting that they had hit birds. The tower in Muan had warned about a bird strike about a minute in advance.
However, it is not clear why the landing gear was not extended during the approach. The investigators did not claim that an error occurred as a result of the bird strike.
The wall at the end of the runway also appeared to have exacerbated the scale of the disaster as the plane broke apart and burst into flames.
An antenna system was placed on the wall to assist pilots when landing. Although the antennas are necessary, according to some experts they should not be covered in a concrete wall and ground with a roof.
