Investigators including officials from South Korea's Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board (ARAIB), US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and aircraft manufacturer Boeing stand by the mound where the instrument landing system localiser is located on Dec 31, at the scene where a Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 aircraft crashed and burst into flames at Muan International Airport on Dec 29 in Muan, some 288km southwest of Seoul. — AFP
South Korea’s effort to find the cause of the country’s deadliest plane crash that killed 179 people made some headway on Dec 31, as authorities started extracting data from the Boeing Co 737-800 aircraft’s cockpit voice recorder.
The device was one of the two “black-boxes” that Korean investigators retrieved from the wreckage of the plane operated by Jeju Air Co. The instrument, which records radio transmissions and pilot’s voices, could offer clues into how the plane ended up skidding on its belly before crashing into the concrete wall at the end of the runway at Muan International Airport on Sunday morning.
Deputy Minister for Civil Aviation Joo Jong-wan said at a briefing on Dec 31 that investigators are in the process of extracting data from the recorder, without giving a timeline for when the process would be completed.
Earlier on Dec 31, Joo said the flight data recorder, which tracks aircraft parameters such as altitude and airspeed among others, lost a cable that links the data storage unit to the power storage unit.
The two devices hold crucial data as investigators try to piece together what caused one of Boeing’s most dependable aircraft to land on its belly. The two devices are being checked by a joint investigation group comprising of US aviation authorities and officials from Boeing, the manufacturer of the plane, Joo added.
“An expert is continuously looking for ways to restore the data inside the recorder,” Joo said at a briefing, adding that the ministry will try to resolve the issue “as soon as possible”.
He declined to comment on other details of the plane such as whether one of the two engines were working when the pilot attempted a go-around to try a second landing and whether there was power shutdown in the plane.
Authorities said they don’t have a clue on why the pilot didn’t manually deploy the landing gear, which apparently was not working as seen in a video footage. There’s a lever in the cockpit to pull the gear, they said.
Investigators have reason to believe bird strikes might have led to the accident based on the communication between the airport control tower and the pilot before the crash. The control tower issued a bird-strike warning two minutes before the pilot declared a mayday emergency call.
Korean authorities have interviewed two officials who worked at the control tower at the time, but they declined to elaborate what those conversations revealed. They are also looking into whether the localiser – an instrument to guide landing of planes – has any relevance to the crash.
The Jeju Air crash was the airline’s first, and ranks as the worst civil air accident ever in South Korea. Overall, fatalities onboard passenger aircraft jumped to 318 this year with this incident and the downing of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane, data compiled by Cirium shows. That’s by far the highest death toll since more than 500 people died in 2018, a year marked by the first of two Boeing Co. 737 Max crashes. – Bloomberg
