The country’s Ministry of Transport announced that the flight data and cockpit voice recorder of the South Korean airliner that crashed last month stopped recording four minutes before the accident.
The Jeju Air flight crash killed 179 people, making it the deadliest airline accident on mainland South Korea. Only two flight attendants survived.
Investigators hoped the recorder data would provide insight into critical moments before the tragedy.
The ministry said it would analyze the cause of the “black box” recording suspension.
The recorder was originally tested in South Korea, the ministry said.
When the data was found to be missing, it was shipped to the United States and analyzed by American safety regulators.
The plane was flying from Bangkok on December 29 when it made an emergency landing at Muan International Airport, slid into a wall at the end of the runway and burst into flames.
Shim Jae-dong, a former Ministry of Transport accident investigator, told Reuters that the loss of data in the critical last few minutes was surprising and that all power, including backups, could have been cut off. suggested.
Many questions remain unanswered. Investigators are looking into what role bird strikes and weather conditions may have played.
They also focus on why the Boeing 737-800’s landing gear was not lowered when it landed on the runway.
