Officials say crashed South Korean plane’s ‘black box’ stopped recording about four minutes before disaster

The flight recorder of a passenger plane that crashed in South Korea last month, killing more than 170 people, stopped working minutes before it landed on the belly of the plane and exploded on the runway, investigators said on Saturday.

Officials investigating the nation’s worst air crash in nearly three decades had hoped information in the so-called black boxes would shed light on why Jeju Air Flight 7C 2216, which took off from Bangkok on Dec. 29, landed belly-landing at Muan International Airport and erupted in a fireball. .

The disaster killed 179 passengers and crew. Two people survived.

But South Korea’s Transportation Ministry said on Saturday that the Boeing 737-800’s cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR) stopped working about four minutes before the crash.

It was unclear why the devices stopped recording, the ministry said in a statement, adding that efforts would be made to determine the cause.

“CVR and FDR data are important data for accident investigations, but accident investigations are conducted by investigating and analyzing various data, so we plan to do our best to accurately identify the cause of the accident,” the transportation ministry said.

The ministry said the cockpit voice recorder was first analyzed locally and then sent to the United States for cross-checking.

The flight data recorder, which was damaged and missing a connector, was sent to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board for analysis last week after South Korean authorities concluded that data could not be extracted from the device due to damage.

CNN has reached out to the NTSB for comment.

It was the country’s worst air crash since a Korean Air Boeing 747 crashed in the jungles of Guam in 1997, killing 228 people.

It’s unclear what caused it and the investigation is expected to take several months.

Footage of the crash shows that neither the rear landing gear nor the front landing gear were visible during the emergency landing.

Before the emergency landing, the pilot issued a distress call and used terms such as “bird strike” and “go-around,” according to officials, who also said the control tower had warned the pilot of birds in the area.

Another point of contention is the concrete embankment the plane struck when landing. According to aviation experts, many airports do not have similar structures so close to the runway.

South Korean police also raided Jeju Air’s offices in Seoul and the operator of Muan International Airport last week as part of the investigation, Reuters reported.

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