The black boxes holding the flight data and cockpit voice recorders for the crashed Jeju Air flight that left 179 people dead stopped recording four minutes before the disaster, South Korea’s transport ministry said Saturday.
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The Boeing 737-800 was flying from Thailand to Muan, South Korea, on December 29 carrying 181 passengers and crew when it belly-landed at the Muan airport and exploded in a fireball after slamming into a concrete barrier.
“The analysis revealed that both the CVR and FDR data were not recorded during the four minutes leading up to the aircraft’s collision with the localiser,” the transport ministry said in a statement, referring to the two recording devices.
The localiser is a barrier at the end of the runway that helps with aircraft landings and was blamed for exacerbating the crash’s severity.
“Plans are in place to investigate the cause of the data loss during the ongoing accident investigation,” the statement added.
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