By Stella Kim and Mithil Aggarwal – NBCNews
The black boxes of the low-cost airline Jeju Air plane that crashed on Sunday in South Korea are the focus of the work of the team of American and South Korean investigators trying to determine the cause of the deadliest aviation disaster of 2024.
The flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder will be essential to determine what happened in the minutes before the forced landing of the Boeing 737-800 at the Muan airport, in the southwest of the country, which ended the life of 179 of the 181 passengers and crew.
Local authorities said Wednesday that they had finished formally identifying the 179 victims overnight and that 11 bodies had already been returned to their families, allowing funerals to begin.
“Today is the New Year, a day meant to be spent with family, which makes the pain even greater,” Choi Sang-mok, South Korea’s acting president, said in a New Year’s speech. “I offer my prayers for the souls of the victims and extend my deepest condolences once again to the grieving families who have lost their loved ones.”
Choi became acting president on Friday, two days before the accident, after his predecessor, Han Duck-soo, was ousted by lawmakers just two weeks after taking office. South Korea is in a state of political turmoil after a failed attempt to declare martial law last month by President Yoon Suk Yeol, who is awaiting trial after also being ousted.
Choi said that “a thorough analysis of the plane, black box data and other factors will ultimately reveal the cause” of the crash, which authorities said could have involved a bird strike, a landing gear failure or problems with other control systems.
South Korean investigators are converting cockpit voice recorder data into audio files, the Transportation Ministry said Wednesday, a process that could take about two days. Although the two black boxes were quickly recovered, the flight data recorder is damaged and will be sent to the United States to try to recover its information.
The American team sent to South Korea includes representatives from the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board, as well as Boeing, the plane’s manufacturer, and CFM International, the engine manufacturer.
The families of the deceased visited the accident site on Wednesday and held a memorial ceremony. Jeju Air CEO Kim E-Bae said on Tuesday that the airline would cover the cost of the funerals and was preparing “emergency financial assistance as a gesture of solidarity and sympathy.”
Kim also said the airline was reducing its winter operation by up to 15% through March to prioritize “operational safety.” “We will improve pre- and post-flight inspections and weather monitoring and pay close attention to the emotional well-being of aviation personnel,” he said.
Brutal crash against a wall at the end of the track
Jeju Air Flight 2216 took off from Bangkok shortly after 2 a.m. (Sunday local time, 2 p.m. Saturday on the East Coast), with 181 people on board, including six crew members.
At around 8:59 a.m., the pilot of the Boeing 737-800 aircraft issued a “bird strike” warning, used to warn of a collision with birds, before declaring “mayday” (the international emergency procedure). , explained Yu Kyung-soo, director of Aviation Safety Policy at the South Korean Ministry of Transportation, during a briefing this Monday.
“The plane then made a turn and, at 9:01 in the morning, it was cleared to access runway 19,” Yu explained. A minute later, the plane touched down at the point that marks the first third of the runway (about 4,000 feet). In less than a minute the plane went off the runway and hit a wall, Yu explained. All except two cabin crew, who were in the tail of the plane, died.
The incident occurred shortly after the airport control tower issued a bird activity advisory at 8:57 a.m., Yu added, but it is not yet known if it was related.
