The black box of the plane after the crash in South Korea will be sent to the United States
Kyiv • UNN
In South Korea, 179 people died in a plane crash, only two flight attendants survived. Investigators send the damaged black box to the United States to analyze the causes of the crash.
In South Korea, investigators investigating the crash of the Jeju Air plane, which killed 179 people in the country's worst air crash, said on Wednesday that they would send one of the recovered black boxes to the United States for analysis, UNN reports citing AFP.
Details
The plane was carrying 181 people from Thailand on Sunday when it sent a distress call and landed, then crashed into a fence and caught fire, killing all on board except for two flight attendants who were pulled from the burning wreckage.
South Korean and U.S. investigators, including those from Boeing, have been combing the crash site in southwestern Muan since the crash.
"The damaged flight data recorder was found to be unrecoverable for data retrieval within the country," said South Korean Deputy Minister of Civil Aviation Joo Jong-wan.
"Today it was decided to transport it to the United States for analysis in cooperation with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board," he said.
Earlier, Zhu said that both of the plane's black boxes had been retrieved, and that for the flight voice recorder, "the initial retrieval has already been completed.
"Based on this preliminary data, we plan to start converting to audio format," he said, meaning that investigators will be able to hear the last negotiations of the pilots.
The second black box, the flight data recorder, "was found to be missing a connector," Zhu said.
"Experts are currently conducting a final check to determine how to extract data from it," he said.
Officials initially pointed to a collision with a bird as a possible cause of the crash, but they have since said the investigation is also looking at a concrete guardrail at the end of the runway, which the Boeing 737-800 was captured on dramatic video colliding with before bursting into flames.
They also said that a special inspection of all Boeing 737-800 models operated by local carriers checks their landing gear following questions about a possible mechanical failure during the crash.
The ongoing inspections "are mainly focused on the landing gear, which in this case did not open properly," said Yu Ken-soo, director general of flight safety policy.
Local media reported that the landing gear opened properly during the first unsuccessful landing attempt of Jeju Air flight 2216 at Muan Airport, and then failed to open during the second.
The matter "is likely to be examined by the Air Accident Investigation Board by comprehensively examining various testimonies and evidence during the investigation," the Landesministerium, which oversees civil aviation, said at a briefing.
Acting President Choi Sang-mok, who has been in power for less than a week, said on Wednesday that the process of identifying the victims had finally been completed and that more bodies had been handed over to relatives so they could hold funerals.
"Our investigators, together 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 meeting on Wednesday.
"Comprehensive analysis and verification of the aircraft structure and black box data will reveal the cause of the accident," Choi added.
The U.S. investigators arrived on Monday and headed to Muan, with the initial joint on-site investigation focusing on a navigation system known as a localizer that assists with aircraft landings.
A localizer installed on a concrete structure at Muan International Airport is the barrier that is believed to have exacerbated the severity of the Jeju Air crash.
The plane was mainly carrying vacationers from trips to Bangkok at the end of the year, and all passengers were Korean nationals, except for two Thais.
A more complete report on what went wrong in the last minutes of the flight is expected after the authorities analyze the black boxes.
