Seoul, South Korea:

The black boxes holding the flight data and cockpit voice recorders for the crashed Jeju Air flight that left 179 people dead stopped recording four minutes before the disaster, South Korea’s transport ministry said Saturday.

The Boeing 737-800 was flying from Thailand to Muan, South Korea, on December 29 carrying 181 passengers and crew when it belly-landed at the Muan airport and exploded in a fireball after slamming into a concrete barrier.

“The analysis revealed that both the CVR and FDR data were not recorded during the four minutes leading up to the aircraft’s collision with the localiser,” the transport ministry said in a statement, referring to the two recording devices.

The localiser is a barrier at the end of the runway that helps with aircraft landings and was blamed for exacerbating the crash’s severity.

“Plans are in place to investigate the cause of the data loss during the ongoing accident investigation,” the statement added.

South Korean and US investigators are still probing the cause of the crash of Jeju Air flight 2216, which prompted a national outpouring of mourning with memorials set up across the country.

Investigators have pointed to a bird strike, faulty landing gear and the runway barrier as possible issues.

The pilot warned of a bird strike before pulling out of a first landing, then crashed on a second attempt when the landing gear did not emerge.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Investigators including officials from South Korea’s Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board (ARAIB), US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and aircraft manufacturer Boeing, stand by the mound where the instrument landing system localizer is located
| Photo Credit: AFP

Investigators probing a Jeju Air crash which killed 179 people in the worst aviation disaster on South Korean soil have extracted the initial data from one of the Boeing 737-800’s black boxes, an official said Wednesday (January 1, 2025).

The plane was carrying 181 people from Thailand to South Korea when it issued a mayday call and belly-landed before hitting a barrier and bursting into flames, killing everyone aboard except two flight attendants pulled from the burning wreckage.

South Korean and U.S. investigators, including from Boeing, have been combing over the crash site in southwestern Muan since the disaster Sunday (December 29, 2024).

Both of the plane’s black boxes were retrieved, and for the cockpit voice recorder, “the initial extraction has already been completed,” said Deputy Minister for civil aviation Joo Jong-wan.

“Based on this preliminary data, we plan to start converting it into audio format,” he said, “meaning investigators would be able to hear the pilots’ final communications.”

The second black box, the flight data recorder, “was found with a missing connector,” Mr. Joo said.

“Experts are currently conducting a final review to determine how to extract data from it.”

Officials initially pointed to a bird strike as a possible cause of the disaster, but they have since said the probe was also examining a concrete barrier at the end of the runway, which dramatic video showed the Boeing 737-800 colliding with before bursting into flames.

There have also been questions over possible mechanical failures, with local media reporting that the landing gear had deployed properly on Jeju Air Flight 2216’s first failed landing attempt at Muan airport before failing on the second.

The issue “will likely be examined by the Accident Investigation Board through a comprehensive review of various testimonies and evidence during the investigation process,” the Ministry of land, which oversees civil aviation, said at a briefing.

All victims identified

At Muan airport, grieving families of victims had become increasingly frustrated by delays in identifying and releasing the bodies.

Officials have said the bodies were extensively damaged by the crash, making the work of identifying remains slow and immensely difficult, even as investigators had to preserve crash-site evidence.

But the country’s acting president said Wednesday (January 1, 2024) the process had finally been completed, and that more bodies had been handed over to relatives so that they could hold funerals.

“Overnight, the identification of all 179 victims was completed,” said acting president Choi Sang-mok, who has been in office less than a week.

“Our investigators, along with the US National Transportation Safety Board and the manufacturer, are conducting a joint investigation into the cause of the accident,” Mr. Choi said at a disaster response meeting Wednesday.

“A comprehensive analysis and review of the aircraft’s structure and the black box data will reveal the cause of the accident,” Mr. Choi added.

The U.S. investigators arrived Monday (December 30, 2024) and headed straight to Muan. The initial on-site joint probe focused on a navigation system known as a localiser that assists in aircraft landings.

The localiser, installed on a concrete structure at Muan International Airport, is the barrier that has been blamed for exacerbating the severity of the Jeju Air crash.

The plane was largely carrying holidaymakers back from year-end trips to Bangkok, with all passengers Korean nationals except for two Thais.

A fuller account of what went wrong in the flight’s final moments is expected once authorities have analysed the black boxes.

Memorial altars for the victims have been set up nationwide, including in Seoul and at Muan airport.

South Korean officials said on Monday (December 30, 2024) they will conduct safety inspections of all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by the country’s airlines, as they struggle to determine what caused a plane crash that killed 179 people a day earlier.

Sunday’s crash, the country’s worst aviation disaster in decades, triggered an outpouring of national sympathy. Many people worry how effectively the South Korean government will handle the disaster as it grapples with a leadership vacuum following the recent successive impeachments of President Yoon Suk Yeol and Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, the country’s top two officials, amid political tumult caused by Yoon’s brief imposition of martial law earlier this month.

New acting President Choi Sang-mok on Monday presided over a task force meeting on the crash and instructed authorities to conduct an emergency review of the country’s aircraft operation systems.

Follow South Korea plane crash highlights

“The essence of a responsible response would be renovating the aviation safety systems on the whole to prevent recurrences of similar incidents and building a safer Republic of South Korea,” said Mr. Choi, who is also deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister.

The Boeing 737-800 plane operated by South Korean budget airline Jeju Air aborted its first landing attempt for reasons that aren’t immediately clear. Then, during its second landing attempt, it received a bird strike warning from the ground control center before its pilot issued a distress signal. The plane landed without its front landing gear deployed, overshot the runway, slammed into a concrete fence and burst into a fireball.

Alan Price, a former chief pilot at Delta Air Lines and now a consultant, said the Boeing 737-800 is a “proven airplane” that belongs to a different class of aircraft than the Boeing 737 Max jetliner that was linked to fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019.

But South Korea’s Transport Ministry said Monday it plans to conduct safety inspections of all of the 101 Boeing 737-800 jetliners operated by the country’s airlines as well as a broader review into safety standards at Jeju Air, which operates 39 of those planes. Senior ministry official Joo Jong-wan said representatives from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and Boeing were expected to arrive in South Korea on Monday to participate in the investigation.

Ministry officials also said they will look into whether the Muan airport’s localizer — a concrete fence housing a set of antennas designed to guide aircraft safely during landings — should have been made with lighter materials that would break more easily upon impact.

Mr. Joo said the ministry has determined that similar concrete structures are in other domestic airports, including in Jeju Island and the southern cities of Yeosu and Pohang, as well as airports in the United States, Spain and South Africa.

Video of the crash indicated that the pilots did not deploy flaps or slats to slow the aircraft, suggesting a possible hydraulic failure, and did not manually lower the landing gear, suggesting they did not have time, said John Cox, a retired airline pilot and CEO of Safety Operating Systems in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Despite that, the jetliner was under control and traveling in a straight line, and damage and injuries likely would have been minimized if not for the barrier being so close to the runway, Mr. Cox said.

Other observers said the videos showed the plane was suffering from suspected engine trouble but the landing gear malfunction was likely a direct reason for the crash. They said there wouldn’t likely be a link between the landing gear problem and the suspected engine issue.

Earlier Monday, another Boeing 737-800 plane operated by Jeju Air returned to Seoul’s Gimpo International Airport shortly after takeoff when the pilot detected a landing gear issue. Song Kyung-hoon, a Jeju Air executive, said the issue was resolved through communication with a land-based equipment centre, but the pilot decided to return to Gimpo as a precautionary measure.

Mr. Joo said officials were reviewing whether there might have been communication problems between air traffic controllers and the pilot. “Our current understanding is that, at some point during the go-around process, communication became somewhat ineffective or was interrupted, ahead of the landing and impact,” he said.

Ministry officials said Monday the plane’s flight data and cockpit audio recorders were moved to a research center at Gimpo airport ahead of their analysis. Ministry officials earlier said it would take months to complete the investigation of the crash.

The Muan crash is South Korea’s deadliest aviation disaster since 1997, when a Korean Airlines plane crashed in Guam, killing 228 people on board.

The crash left many South Koreans shocked and ashamed, with the government announcing a seven-day national mourning period through Jan. 4. Some questioned whether the crash involved safety or regulatory issues, such as a 2022 Halloween crush in Seoul that killed 160 people and a 2014 ferry sinking that killed 304 people.

The Transport Ministry said authorities have identified 146 bodies and are collecting DNA and fingerprint samples from the other 33.

Park Han Shin, a representative of the bereaved families, said they were told that the bodies were so badly damaged that officials need time before returning them to their families.

“I demand that the government mobilize more personnel to return our brothers and family members as intact as possible more swiftly,” he said, choking down tears.

The crash was yet more major news for South Koreans already reeling from a political crisis set off by Yoon’s martial law decree, which brought hundreds of troops into Seoul streets and revived traumatic memories of past military rule in the 1970-80s.

The political tumult resulted in the opposition-controlled National Assembly impeaching Yoon and Han. The safety minister stepped down and the police chief was arrested over their roles in the martial law inforcement.

The absence of top officials responsible for managing disasters has led to concerns.

“We are deeply worried whether the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters really can handle the disaster,” the mass-circulation JoongAng Ilbo newspaper said in an editorial Monday.

The Transport Ministry said the plane was returning from Bangkok and its passengers include two Thai nationals.

Thailand’s Prime Minister, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, expressed deep condolences to the families of those affected by the accident through a post on social platform X.

Ms. Paetongtarn said she had ordered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to provide assistance immediately.

– AP