Seoul, Jan 11 (EFE).- The black boxes of the crashed Jeju Air plane stopped recording flight data four minutes before the aircraft crashed in the worst accident in South Korean aviation history, the Ministry of Transport reported on Saturday.
This discovery makes it challenging to investigate the causes of the plane crash on Dec. 29 at Muan International Airport that killed 179 people on board.
The analysis of the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder carried out by the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) shows that the recordings stopped at 8.59 am local time.
The explosion of the Boeing 737-800 took place at 9.03 am when the plane crashed into a concrete wall housing localizer equipment at the end of the runway after having touched down without landing gear or braking devices.
The Ministry of Transport said that although the data from the black boxes are essential for the investigation of the accident, they are not its only sources of information.
The South Korean authorities will continue to analyze air traffic records, video recordings of the accident and the remains found at the scene of the crash.
The ministry had sent the contents of the black boxes to the NTSB last week to obtain a double verification of them.
The accident, in which only two of the plane’s crew survived, has led the low-cost airline Jeju Air to reduce its correspondence from Busan during the first quarter to strengthen its aircraft maintenance operations, in full scrutiny of the causes of the accident. EFE
asb-ahg/tw
