THE black box on the Jeju Air jet that crashed in South Korea stopped recording data just minutes before the disaster, officials said.
A tragic incident occurred at Muan International Airport on December 29, resulting in the deaths of 179 individuals onboard when their plane crashed into a wall at the runway’s end during an emergency landing, leading to a fiery explosion.
In the midst of investigations into this devastating aviation disaster, which stands as the worst in South Korean history, the transport ministry disclosed that crucial flight data and recordings of cockpit conversations ceased four minutes before the fatal crash.
The ministry is now investigating how the aircraft’s black boxes – which are designed to be almost indestructible – stopped working.
Black boxes are usually found at the back of the aircraft near the tail, which is usually the least damaged part in a crash.
They are designed to withstand extreme temperatures, high-speed impact, and submersion underwater to help investigators retrieve crucial flight data.
This includes speed, altitude, engine noise, radio transmissions and voice recordings from the cockpit.
However, they are not entirely fail-safe and can be destroyed.
The Jeju Air flight involved two vital black boxes – one dedicated to capturing data from the aircraft itself and the other focused on recording the interactions of the pilots within the cockpit – both of which abruptly ceased functioning prior to the tragic event.
The transport ministry said officials sent the damaged devices to the US National Transportation Safety Board laboratory for analysis when the missing data was discovered.
What is known about the incident is that in the four minutes before the crash, the pilots reported a bird strike to air traffic control.
They then declared an emergency and abandoned a landing attempt to try another manoeuvre.
The Boeing 737-800 then did a sharp turn and travelled towards the airport’s runway from the other end before crash-landing without the landing gear deployed.
As well as the missing data, concerns have been raised among investigators about the wall that the aircraft smashed into before turning into a fireball.
The embankment was designed to support the “localiser” system that helps aircraft during landing.
But investigators are looking into why it was built so near the end of the runway and out of such hard material.
Bosses of the South Korean airline allegedly knew that the concrete wall it smashed into was too close to the runway.
According to Sim Jai-dong, a former accident investigator for the transport ministry in South Korea, the fact that data is missing from the key moments before the crash is surprising.
He believes it could suggest that the aircraft lost all power – including back-up – which he said was “incredibly rare”.
Aviation expert Frank E Turney, the chair of the aviation department for Capitol Technology University in the US told The Guardian that the flight data from black boxes are “usually a fairly sizeable piece of the puzzle that [investigators] use to determine the accident”.
But he explained that “the flight data recorder is not going to sit there and tell you this is what caused this accident”.
He said: “It’s going to give you all of the underlying factual data that you can use to try to assess how the accident occurred.
“Sometimes the data that you’re getting from the flight data recorder will be very conclusive on what the cause of the accident was.
“But most of the time it is going to be a piece of the overall investigation, and not necessarily a slam dunk on ‘this is what caused this accident’.”
The transport ministry has reassured families of victims – saying that other available data is being used to investigate what happened and the investigation will be transparent.
But some grieving families have spoken out against the ministry investigating the crash and called for an independent party to take the lead.
As officials continue to look into what happened, South Korea has ordered emergency safety inspections across all of its airline operations and on all Boeing 737-800s.
Kim Yi-bae, CEO of the airline, Jeju, said that “nothing abnormal was noted with the landing gear.”
He added that a standard pre-flight inspection found “no issues” with the passenger plane.
“As for whether the landing gear functioned properly, that is directly related to the accident investigation, and we are not in a position to know at this time,” he told reporters.
The Sun previously reported that aviation expert Professor Ron Batsch believes that something “sinister” may have caused the crash.
Speaking on Australia’s “Today” show, he said it is “pretty unlikely that a birdstrike alone would be sufficient to bring down an aircraft or to foresee landing gear not to be able to be operative”.
Prof Batsch added: “So it may have been, and this is only speculation, that there may have been something more sinister on board the aircraft that could have caused it.”
The announcement that both black boxes stopped recording four minutes before the crash only adds another twist to the tragic case.
