The black box of the Jeju Air airliner, which crashed at Muan Airport in the Republic of Korea late last month, did not work for the last four minutes before the accident, South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said on Saturday.
SEOUL, Jan. 11 (Xinhua) — The black box of the Jeju Air airliner that crashed at Muan Airport in the Republic of Korea late last month has not been restored. operated for the last four minutes before the accident, South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said Saturday.
Analysis results on the aircraft’s flight data recorder (FDR) and cockpit voice recorder (CVR) by the US National Transportation Safety Board showed that Data storage in the FDR and CVR was interrupted about four minutes before the aircraft crashed into a localizer, according to the ministry.
The ministry’s aviation and rail accident investigation committee plans to identify the cause of the data storage shutdown.
The localizer is an element of the instrument landing system which helps guide aircraft along the axis of the runway.
On December 29, a Jeju Air airliner carrying 181 people from Bangkok attempted to land on its belly due to a landing gear failure. It went off the runway and hit a concrete mound equipped with a localizer at Muan International Airport, some 290km southwest of the capital Seoul. The tragedy caused the deaths of 179 people on board.
