The Department of Transportation is investigating the cause of data loss following the worst air disaster in the country’s history.
Black boxes containing flight data and cockpit voice recorders on Jeju Air’s Boeing 737-800 stopped recording about four minutes before the plane crashed in South Korea in December, the Transport Ministry said of the country.
Jeju Air Flight 7C2216 was flying from Thailand to South Korea’s Muan International Airport on Dec. 29 when it landed on its belly, hit a concrete barrier and exploded, killing 179 of 181 passengers and crew members.
It is the worst air disaster ever to occur on South Korean soil.
“Analysis revealed that CVR and FDR data were not recorded in the four minutes before the plane collided with the locator,” South Korea’s Transport Ministry said on Saturday, referring to to both recording devices.
The locator is a barrier at the end of the runway that facilitates plane landings and has been blamed for exacerbating the severity of the accident.
The voice recorder was initially analyzed in South Korea, and when data was found to be missing, it was sent to a laboratory at the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, the ministry said.
But it appears that boxes containing clues about the final moments of the theft suffered data loss, forcing authorities to try to find out what happened.
“Plans are in place to investigate the cause of the data loss during the ongoing accident investigation,” the ministry said.
Sim Jai-dong, a former accident investigator at the Transport Ministry, told the Reuters news agency that the discovery of the missing data was surprising and suggested that all power supply, including emergency power, could have was cut on the plane, which is rare.
Investigators said the boxes were crucial to their investigation, but added they would not give up efforts to find out why the accident happened.
Investigators pointed to a bird strike, faulty landing gear and the runway barrier as possible problems.
The pilot also warned of a bird strike before abandoning an initial landing and performing a go-around.
But instead of performing a full go-around, the Boeing 737-800 took a sharp turn and approached the airport’s only runway from the opposite end, crashing without gear. landing deployed.
This week, lead investigator Lee Seung-yeol told reporters that “feathers were found” in one of the plane’s recovered engines, but cautioned that a bird strike did not result in a immediate engine failure.
Authorities searched offices at Muan Airport where the crash took place, a regional aviation office in the southwest city and the Jeju Air office in the capital, Seoul.
They also banned the general manager of Jeju Air from leaving the country.
As the investigation continues, Transport Minister Park Sang-woo submitted his resignation earlier this week, saying he felt “a heavy sense of responsibility for this tragedy.”
