Officials say the South Korean plane crash’s black box did not record the last four minutes

Black boxes for Passenger plane that crashed in South Korea South Korean officials said Saturday that the deaths of 179 people last month stopped being recorded about four minutes before the plane crashed.

After analyzing the devices The US National Transportation Safety Board concluded The South Korean Ministry of Transport said that the flight data and cockpit voice recorders stopped working about four minutes before the accident.

the Boeing 737-800 The plane, operated by Jeju Air, skidded off a runway in the South Korean town of Muan on December 29 after the landing gear failed, struck a concrete structure and burst into flames, killing all but two of the plane’s 181 people on board.

South Korean officials also sent the black boxes to the NTSB for closer examination after discovering that some data had disappeared.

The Ministry of Transport said it was not immediately clear why the devices failed to record data in the last four minutes.

“Data from the CVR (cockpit voice recorder) and FDR (flight data recorder) are crucial in investigating accidents, but such investigations are conducted by examining and analyzing various sources of information, and we plan to do our best to determine the cause.” The Ministry explained in a statement that the accident occurred.

South Korean investigators said that air traffic controllers warned the pilot of a possible bird collision two minutes before the plane issued a distress signal confirming a bird collision, after which the pilot attempted an emergency landing.

After the accident, authorities immediately ordered inspections of all 737-800 aircraft operated by the country’s airlines – dozens of aircraft in total – following the accident.

South Korean officials also pledged to improve airport safety after experts linked the rising death toll to GPS tracking at Muan Airport, the structure the plane struck during the crash. The Localizer, an array of antennas designed to guide planes during landing, was placed in a dirt-covered concrete structure on an elevated embankment. This has raised questions about whether the structure should be built with lighter materials that could break more easily on impact.