The South Korea transport ministry had on Saturday, revealed that the flight data and cockpit voice recorders on the Jeju Air jet which crashed on December 29 stopped recording about four minutes before the airliner crashed into a concrete structure at Muan airport.
Authorities investigating the disaster that killed 179 people, –the worst ever on South Korean soil– have plans to analyse what caused the “black boxes” to stop recording, the ministry had said in a statement.
The ministry further added that the voice recorder was originally analysed in South Korea, and, when data was discovered to be missing, sent to a U.S. National Transportation Safety Board laboratory for further analysis.
Jeju Air 7C2216, which departed the Thai capital Bangkok for Muan in southwestern South Korea, belly-landed and overshot the regional airport’s runway, blowing up into flames after hitting an embankment.
The pilots told air traffic control the aircraft had suffered a bird strike and proclaimed an emergency about four minutes before the air craft slammed into the embankment and burst into in flames. Two injured crew members, sitting in the tail section, were the only ones rescued.
Two minutes before the Mayday emergency announcement, air traffic control gave caution for “bird activity”. Declaring emergency, the pilots gave up the landing attempt and initiated a go-around.
Unfortunately, instead of making a full go-about, the nudged airline’s Boeing 737-800 jet took a sharp turn and approached the airport’s sole runway from the opposite end, crash-landing without landing gear deployed.
An ex-transport ministry accident investigator, Sim Jai-dong, said the discovery of the missing data from the crucial final minutes was shocking and suggests all power including backup may have been cut, which is a rare thing.
The transport ministry said other data available would be used in the investigation and that it would ensure the probe is transparent and that information is divulged to the victims’ families.
Already, some members of the victims’ families have opined that the transport ministry should not be taking the lead in the investigation but that it should involve independent experts including those suggested by the families.
The aircraft investigation is also focusing on the embankment, which was designed to prop up the “localiser” system used to assist aircraft landing, including why it was built with such unyielding material and so close to the end of the runway.
