By Hyunjoo Jin and Jack Kim
SEOUL (Reuters) – The two black boxes on the Boeing (NYSE ) plane involved in the worst aviation disaster on South Korean soil stopped recording about four minutes before the crash, the Transportation Ministry said on Saturday.
South Korean investigators previously said flight data and cockpit voice recorders were key to uncovering the cause of last month's crash that killed 179 people.
It happened about four minutes after the pilot of the plane operated by Jeju Air reported a bird strike.
Authorities investigating the accident plan to analyze what caused the black boxes to stop recording, the ministry said in a statement.
The voice recorder was initially analyzed in South Korea and, when data was found to be missing, it was sent to a U.S. National Transportation Safety Board laboratory, the ministry said.
Black box recorders collect data on communications involving pilots in the cockpit, as well as the performance of aircraft systems in flight.
Jeju Air 7C2216, which departed the Thai capital Bangkok for Muan in southwestern South Korea, belly-landed and skidded off the runway at the regional airport on December 29, exploding in flames after hitting an embankment Only two people survived: the crew members who were sitting in the tail section.
Two minutes before the pilots declared a Mayday emergency call, air traffic control warned for “bird activity.”
Sim Jai-dong, a former accident investigator at the Ministry of Transport, said the discovery of missing data from the crucial final minutes of the low-cost airline's Boeing 737-800 plane was surprising and suggests that all energy, including backup, it may have been cut, which is rare.
The Transport Ministry said other available data would be used in the investigation and that it would ensure the investigation was transparent and that information was shared with victims' families.
Some members of the victims' families have said the Transport Ministry should not take the lead in the investigation and should involve independent experts, including those recommended by the families.
The investigation has also focused on the embankment on which the plane crashed, which was designed to support a “localizer” system used to help planes land, and why it was constructed of such a rigid material and so close to the end of the track.
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