South Korean investigators probing the Jeju air crash that killed 179 people in the worst aviation disaster on their soil said Wednesday they will send one of the recovered black boxes to the United States for analysis.
The plane was carrying 181 people from Thailand on Sunday when the plane issued a mayday call and attempted to land before hitting a barrier and bursting into flames, killing all but two flight attendants who were pulled from the burning wreckage. Were killed.
South Korean and US investigators, including Boeing, have been examining the crash site in southwestern Muan since Sunday’s disaster.
“The damaged flight data recorder has been deemed inaccessible for data extraction domestically,” said Ju Jong-wan, South Korea’s vice minister of civil aviation.
“It was agreed today to transport it to the United States for analysis in collaboration with the US National Transportation Safety Board.”
Xu previously said that both of the plane’s black boxes had been recovered, and for the cockpit voice recorder, “preliminary extraction has already been completed”.
“Based on this initial data, we plan to begin converting it into audio format,” he said, meaning investigators will be able to listen to the pilots’ final communications.
The second black box, the flight data recorder, was “found with a missing connector,” Xu said.
“Experts are currently conducting a final review to determine how to extract the data from it.”
Officials initially pointed to a bird strike as a possible cause of the disaster, but they have since said the investigation was also examining a concrete barrier at the end of the runway, in which the dramatic video shows the Boeing 737- The 800 was shown colliding before catching fire.
He also said a special inspection of all Boeing 737-800 models operated by local carriers was checking their landing gear following questions over a possible mechanical failure in the crash.
Yoo Kyeong-soo, director general of aviation safety policy, said the ongoing inspections are “focusing primarily on the landing gear, which failed to deploy properly in this case”.
Local media reported that the landing gear had deployed properly in the first failed landing attempt of Jeju Air Flight 2216 at Muan Airport, but before the second failed.
“This issue will likely be examined by the Accident Investigation Board through a comprehensive review of various evidence and evidence during the investigation process,” the Land Ministry, which oversees civil aviation, said in a briefing.
All victims identified
At Mu’an Airport, bereaved families of the victims were increasingly frustrated by the delay in identifying and releasing the bodies.
Authorities have said that the bodies were extensively damaged by the crash, making identification work slow and extremely difficult, even as investigators had to preserve evidence at the crash site.
But the country’s acting President Choi Sang-mok, who has been in office for less than a week, said Wednesday that the process had finally been completed, and more bodies had been handed over to relatives so they could perform funeral rites.
“Our investigators, along with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and the manufacturer, are conducting a joint investigation into the cause of the accident,” Choi said at a disaster response meeting on Wednesday.
“A comprehensive analysis and review of the aircraft’s structure and black box data will determine the cause of the accident,” Choi said.
US investigators had arrived on Monday and headed straight to Muan, with the initial on-site joint investigation focusing on a navigation system known as a localizer that assists in aircraft landing.
The localizer, installed on a concrete structure at Muan International Airport, is the obstruction that has been blamed for increasing the severity of the Jeju Air crash.
The plane was carrying largely holidaymakers from a year-end trip to Bangkok, with all the passengers except two Thais being Korean nationals.
Full details of what went wrong in the flight’s final moments are expected to emerge after authorities analyze the black box.
Memorial altars to the victims have been set up across the country, including in Seoul and Muon Airport.
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