Flight recorders on South Korean jet stopped working minutes before deadly crash

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Flight recorders on a South Korean jet that crashed, killing 179 people, stopped working just minutes before the disaster. The Jeju flight to Muan suffered a bird strike before skidding along the runway and hitting a wall. It has now been revealed that the flight data and cockpit recordings stopped working four minutes before the explosion. North Asia correspondent James Oaten reports.

Transcript

00:00Well, this will be a major setback for air crash investigators.

00:07When the Jeju flight from Bangkok to Muan crashed, killing 179 people on board with

00:13only two survivors, it became the worst aviation disaster on South Korean soil.

00:18Now, we know the aircraft suffered a bird strike.

00:21The pilot issued a mayday call, but what happened next between that moment and the aircraft

00:27crashing into a wall, well, that is a big mystery.

00:31And now, the next four minutes after that mayday call was made of flight recordings

00:37has been lost.

00:39And this will be a major setback.

00:42There are some big questions that need answering here.

00:45First of all, the bird strike.

00:46Ordinarily, a bird strike is manageable, even if it does affect one of the engines.

00:51And the aircraft would normally be able to land in a controlled or cautious manner.

00:57But instead, this aircraft made a hurried landing, it would seem.

01:02It's landed the aircraft going in the opposite direction it was originally meant to.

01:07And there simply wasn't enough runway there.

01:10And that's where it skidded along the runway and crashed into the wall.

01:14So first question is, why did the pilot feel the need to make such a quick landing rather

01:19than going around and landing in the direction he was meant to?

01:26Another issue is the landing gears.

01:28We know from the vision that they weren't deployed and may have suffered a malfunction.

01:33But normally, bird strikes don't cause the landing gears to suffer a malfunction.

01:38So again, why weren't the landing gears deployed?

01:43These are the types of questions that obviously investigators are trying to get to the bottom

01:47of.

01:48And it's now become much harder, given those last four minutes of the aircraft, the flight

01:53recordings of those vital four minutes have been lost.

01:57Now, South Korea's transport ministry says it's not clear why both of the black boxes

02:02have failed to record those last four minutes.

02:05They have, though, said there is other data they can look at.

02:09So it doesn't kill off the investigation at all.

02:12But all in all, this is a setback.

02:14The investigation now is still expected to take some months.

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