Investigators have revealed that two black boxes mysteriously stopped recording in the final minutes before last month’s Jeju Air crash in South Korea killed 179 people.
The first report on last month’s Jeju Air crash in South Korea confirmed that the last four minutes the plane’s two black box recordings were “missing.”
The preliminary accident report was released by South Korea’s Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board on Monday.
The report said the flight data and cockpit voice recorders on the Boeing 737-800 had stopped working.
The finding confirms what the country’s Transportation Ministry initially said earlier this month.
South Korean officials had sent the devices to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board for closer examination.
It came after officials discovered that some of the data was “missing.”
However, it remains unclear why the devices stopped recording.
The report also found traces of bird strikes – feathers and bird blood stains – in both the plane’s engines.
Nevertheless, investigators have yet to determine what caused the crash.
Referring to a migratory duck, the report said:
“The samples were sent to specialized organizations for DNA analysis, and a domestic organization identified them as belonging to Baikal teals.”
The plane skidded off the runway at Muan International Airport on December 29, 2024.
The incident occurred after the plane’s landing gear failed to deploy.
The packed passenger jet proceeded to slam into a concrete structure and burst into flames.
Only two of the 181 people on board survived.
The flight was returning from Bangkok and all the victims were South Koreans except for two Thai nationals.
Investigators earlier said that air traffic controllers warned the pilots about possible bird strikes two minutes before the aircraft issued a distress signal confirming that a bird strike had occurred.
After which, the pilots attempted an emergency landing.
The preliminary report said the pilots also noticed a group of birds while approaching the runway at the Muan airport and that a security camera had filmed the plane coming close to birds during an aborted landing.
The report said authorities will disassemble the engines, examine their components in-depth, and analyze the black box and air traffic control data.
They will also investigate the embankment, localizer, and bird strike evidence to ultimately determine the cause of the crash.
Officials said the report has been sent to the International Civil Aviation Organization, Thailand, the U.S., and France, adding that the aircraft was built in the U.S. and its engines in France.
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