The black boxes holding the flight data and cockpit voice recorders of a South Korean passenger jet that crashed, killing 179 people, stopped recording four minutes before the disaster, officials have said.
Jeju Air 7C2216, a Boeing 737-800 jet, was flying from the Thai capital of Bangkok to Muan, South Korea, on 29 December when it crash-landed, skidding off the runway into a wall and exploding into flames.
Of the 175 passengers and six crew members on board, only two crew survived and were pulled from the wreckage at Muan International Airport, about 180 miles south of Seoul.
The voice recorder was initially analysed in South Korea, and, when data was found to be missing, was then sent to a US National Transportation Safety Board laboratory, the ministry said.
The damaged flight data recorder was taken to the US for analysis in cooperation with the US safety regulator, the ministry said.
The pilots told air traffic control the aircraft had suffered a bird strike and declared an emergency about four minutes before it crashed.
Sim Jai-dong, a former transport ministry accident investigator, said the discovery of the missing data from the crucial final minutes was surprising and suggested all power including backup may have been cut, which is rare.
The transport ministry said other data was available and would be used in the investigation, which it said would be transparent, with information being shared with the victims’ families.
The investigation of the crash has also focused on the embankment, which was designed to prop up the “localiser” system, used to assist aircraft landing, raising questions as to why it was built with concrete and so close to the end of the runway.
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