Flight data and cockpit voice recorders on the Jeju Air plane that crashed in South Korea in December, killing 179 people, stopped recording about four minutes before the airliner hit a concrete structure at Muan airport, the country's transport ministry said on Saturday. Authorities investigating the disaster, the worst plane crash on South Korean soil, plan to determine what caused the black boxes to stop recording, according to the ministry’s statement. The voice recorder was initially analysed in South Korea but was later sent to a US National Transportation Safety Board laboratory when missing data was discovered, the ministry said. The damaged flight data recorder was also sent to the US for analysis in collaboration with the American safety regulator, the ministry added. Black box recorders capture data on cockpit communications as well as the performance of the aircraft’s systems during flight. Jeju Air flight 7C2216, which had departed from Bangkok, Thailand, en route to Muan in southwestern South Korea, belly-landed and overshot the runway at the regional airport on 29 December. The aircraft exploded into flames after colliding with an embankment. Of the 181 people on board, only two survived—crew members seated in the tail section. Two minutes before the pilots issued a Mayday emergency call, air traffic control had issued a warning for "bird activity." Sim Jai-dong, a former accident investigator for the transport ministry, described the discovery of missing data from the budget airline’s Boeing 737-800 jet’s final minutes as surprising, Reuters reported. He added that the loss of all power, including backup systems, could explain the anomaly, noting that such an occurrence is rare. The transport ministry stated that other available data would be utilised in the investigation and pledged to ensure the process remains transparent, with updates shared with the victims’ families. However, some family members of the victims have called for independent experts, including those nominated by the families, to be involved in the investigation, arguing that the transport ministry should not lead the inquiry. The investigation has also turned its attention to the embankment the plane crashed into. The structure, which supports a "localiser" system that aids aircraft landings, is being examined to determine why it was constructed from such rigid materials and positioned so close to the end of the runway.
