Jeju Airlines’ flight recorder stopped working 4 minutes before the plane crash

Flight recorder for Jeju Air passenger plane It crashed South Korean officials said on Saturday that the recording operation that killed 179 people last month stopped recording for the last four minutes, representing a major setback for investigators.

Data extracted from the so-called black box, which consists of the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, is generally considered crucial in aviation accident investigations. South Korean officials, working with the National Transportation Safety Board in the United States, said the flight data for the plane The last four minutesIt will be especially important in this collapse

But on Saturday, South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said that for reasons yet to be determined, the Boeing 737-800’s black box had stopped recording at that time.

“We plan to investigate why the data was not recorded,” the ministry said in a press release. She also said other data and analysis would be used to try to understand what happened in last month’s disaster.

Jeju Air flight 7C2216, from Bangkok with 181 people on board, was preparing to land at Muan International Airport in southwestern South Korea at 8:59 a.m. on December 29 when its pilot reported: “Mayday, mayday, mayday.” “Bird strike, bird strike,” according to officials. The pilot also told air traffic control that he was “spinning,” meaning he would abort his first attempt to land and spin in the air in preparation for a second attempt.

But it seemed he didn’t have enough time to make a full circle. Instead, the plane approached the runway from the opposite direction and landed on its belly, without moving its landing gear. Seemingly unable to control his speed, he overshot the runway. Four minutes after Mayday’s emergency report, the plane struck a concrete structure off the south end of the runway and burst into flames.

The main question is: What happened during those four minutes?

“The black box data is crucial to the investigation,” said Hwang Ho-won, president of the Korea Aviation Security Association. “If investigators don’t have that, it creates a serious problem for them.”

The missing data adds further mystery to the crash, which was the worst aviation disaster on South Korean soil and the deadliest worldwide since Lion Air Flight 610 in 2018, when all 189 people on board died.

Huang said the black boxes could be damaged by collision, fire or prolonged exposure to deep water. But he said it was difficult to explain why the Jeju Air plane’s black box failed to register in the final four minutes

He said investigators may be able to reconstruct part of the conversation inside the cockpit based on interviews with control tower officials. Huang said radar and other data indicated the plane attempted but failed to gain altitude after a bird strike was reported and accelerated to land.

Investigators said they were looking into various possibilities, including the possibility that the plane lost use of one or both of its engines in the final minutes.

Most of the 179 people who died were South Koreans returning home from a Christmas holiday in Thailand. The two survivors were crew members who were found injured in the tail section of the plane.

The disaster sparked a nationwide outpouring of grief, with memorials erected across South Korea, and came at a time when the country was also dealing with… Political crisis It began with President Yeon Suk-yeol briefly imposing martial law and being condemned by Parliament.