South Korea Jeju Air jet black boxes stopped recording 4 minutes before crash, ministry says

SEOUL (Reuters) -The flight data and cockpit voice recorders on the Jeju Air jet that crashed on Dec. 29 stopped recording about four minutes before the airliner hit a concrete structure at South Korea’s Muan airport, the transport ministry said on Saturday.

Authorities investigating the disaster that killed 179 people, the worst on South Korean soil, plan to analyse what caused the “black boxes” to stop recording, the ministry said in a statement.

The voice recorder was initially analysed in South Korea, and, when data was found to be missing, then sent to a U.S. National Transportation Safety Board laboratory, the ministry said.

The damaged flight data recorder was taken to the United States for analysis in cooperation with the U.S. safety regulator, the ministry has said.

Jeju Air 7C2216, which departed the Thai capital Bangkok for Muan in southwestern South Korea, belly-landed and overshot the regional airport’s runway, exploding into flames after hitting an embankment.

The pilots told air traffic control the aircraft had suffered a bird strike and declared emergency about four minutes before it crashed into the embankment exploding in flames. Two injured crew members, sitting in the tail section, were rescued.