Flight data and cockpit voice recorders on the South Korean Jeju Air plane which crashed last month, killing 179 people, stopped recording about four minutes before it came down at Muan airport, the country’s transport ministry said on Saturday.
Authorities investigating the devastating crash said the plane’s black boxes stopped recording four minutes before the airliner hit a concrete structure at the end of the runway at Muan.
Jeju Air flight 7C2216 departed Bangkok on 29 December for Muan in southwestern South Korea, but crash-landed on its belly, overshooting the regional airport’s runway and exploding into flames after hitting an embankment.
The voice recorder recovered from the jet was analysed in South Korea, but authorities then sent it to a US National Transportation Safety Board laboratory after data was found to be missing.
Pilots received a warning from air traffic controllers about possible bird strikes and the plane issued a distress signal before the crash, initial investigations revealed, but the cause of the disaster remains unclear.
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