The black boxes holding the flight data and cockpit voice recorders of a South Korean passenger jet that crashed, killing 179 people, stopped recording four minutes before the disaster, officials have said.
Jeju Air 7C2216, a Boeing 737-800 jet, was flying from the Thai capital of Bangkok to Muan, South Korea, on 29 December when it crash-landed, skidding off the runway into a wall and exploding into flames.
Of the 175 passengers and six crew members on board, only two crew survived and were pulled from the wreckage at Muan International Airport, about 180 miles south of Seoul.
Authorities investigating the disaster plan to look into what caused the black boxes to stop recording, South Korea’s transport ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
The voice recorder was initially analysed in South Korea. When data was found to be missing, it was sent to a US National Transportation Safety Board laboratory, the ministry said.
The damaged flight data recorder was also taken to the United States for analysis in cooperation with the US safety regulator.
Sim Jai-dong, a former transport ministry accident investigator, said the discovery of the missing data from the crucial final minutes was surprising.
He added it suggests all power – including backup – may have been cut, which is rare.
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The pilots told air traffic control the aircraft had suffered a bird strike and declared an emergency about four minutes before it crashed.
Earlier this week, lead investigator Lee Seung-yeol said feathers were found in one of the engines recovered from the crash scene.
He added video footage showed there was a bird strike on one of the engines.
While authorities previously said they suspected a bird strike may have played a role in the crash, it has not yet been confirmed why the landing gear was not deployed, or what led to the crash-landing.
The plane exploded seemingly while colliding with a concrete wall at the end of the runway, and experts have questioned why it was there.
Police are also investigating how the airfield wall the plane hit was constructed.
