Investigators working on the crash of the Jeju Air plane, which left 179 dead in South Korea, have extracted the first data from one of the black boxes of the Boeing 737-800, announced this Wednesday, January 1 a government official. The South Korean low-cost carrier's plane was carrying a total of 181 people, including six crew members. All died except for a flight attendant, making it the worst air disaster in history on South Korean soil.
South Korean and American investigators, including from Boeing, are combing the crash site in Muan, in the southwest of South Korea. The two black boxes have been recovered. “Initial extraction is already complete” regarding the one recording conversations in the cockpit, said South Korean Vice Minister of Aviation Joo Jong-wan.
“Based on this preliminary data, we plan to start converting it to audio format”he added, which could allow investigators to hear the final conversations between the pilots and the noises. The second black box, the flight data recorder which allows us to know the speed or landing gear of the aircraft, “was found with a missing connector”said Joo Jong-wan. South Korea will therefore send the black box to the United States, said Joo Jong-wan. Being impossible to extract on South Korean soil the information contained in “the flight data recorder was damaged, it was decided today to transport it to the United States for collaborative analysis” with American investigators.
The presence of the wall at the end of the runway will be examined
On Tuesday, South Korea announced that it would review regulations regarding a concrete wall at Muan International Airport, blamed in the accident. The aircraft coming from Bangkok landed on its belly before crashing at high speed against a wall at the end of the runway. Under the force of the impact, the device bent in two and caught fire.
The possibility of a collision with birds, a fear of pilots, was mentioned to explain the accident. The Muan airport control tower had sent a warning to this effect to the plane's crew three minutes before the crash. The pilot had sent him a distress message before the emergency landing. Jet engines can lose power or even stop completely after sucking in a bird. Critics, however, focus on the architecture of the airport and in particular on the presence at the end of the runway of the wall that the plane hit.
France
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