SEOUL (Reuters) – Flight data and cockpit voice recordings from the Jeju Air jet that crashed on Dec. 29 stopped recording about four minutes before the airliner hit a concrete building at South Korea's Muan International Airport, the transportation ministry said Saturday.
Authorities investigating the disaster that killed 179 people, South Korea's worst in the world, plan to analyze what caused the “black boxes” to stop recording, the office said in a statement.
The voice recorder was first analyzed in South Korea, and, when the data was found to be missing, it was then sent to the US Transportation Security Board, the department said.
The damaged flight data recorder was taken to the United States for review in cooperation with the US security directorate, the ministry said.
Jeju Air 7C2216, which left Thailand's capital Bangkok for Muan in southwestern South Korea, landed on its belly and overshot the runway of the regional airport, bursting into flames after hitting a wall.
The pilots told air traffic control that the plane had been struck by birds and declared an emergency about four minutes before it crashed into a wall in flames. Two injured crew members, who were sitting in the tail section, were rescued.