South Korean investigators, examining the Jeju Air crash that claimed 179 lives in the country’s deadliest aviation disaster, announced on Wednesday that they will send one of the recovered black boxes to the United States for analysis.
The Boeing 737-800, carrying 181 people on a flight from Thailand to South Korea on Sunday, issued a mayday call and made a belly landing before striking a barrier and erupting into flames. Two flight attendants survived by being pulled from the wreckage, but all other passengers perished.
Investigators from South Korea and the US, including experts from Boeing, have been working at the crash site in southwestern Muan to determine the cause of the disaster.
South Korea’s Deputy Minister for Civil Aviation, Joo Jong-wan, confirmed that the flight data recorder was too damaged to be analyzed locally. “It has been agreed to send it to the United States for analysis in cooperation with the US National Transportation Safety Board,” he said. He also stated that both black boxes had been recovered, and the initial extraction of data from the cockpit voice recorder had already been completed. “Based on this preliminary data, we plan to convert it into an audio format,” Joo added, enabling investigators to listen to the pilots’ final communications. The second black box, the flight data recorder, was found with a missing connector.
While initial reports suggested a bird strike could have been the cause of the disaster, investigators are now also considering the possibility that a concrete barrier at the end of the runway contributed to the crash. Dramatic video footage showed the plane colliding with the barrier before catching fire.
A thorough inspection of all Boeing 737-800 models operated by local carriers is underway, focusing on the landing gear after it failed to deploy in this incident, according to Yoo Kyeong-soo, Director General for Aviation Safety Policy.
