SEOUL: South Korean investigators probing a Jeju Air crash which killed 179 people in the worst aviation disaster on its soil said on Wednesday they will send one of the retrieved black boxes to the United States for analysis.

The Boeing 737-800 was carrying 181 people from Thailand to South Korea on Sunday when it issued a mayday call and belly-landed before hitting a barrier and bursting into flames, killing everyone aboard except two flight attendants pulled from the burning wreckage.

South Korean and US investigators, including from Boeing, have been combing the crash site in southwestern Muan since the disaster to establish a cause.

“The damaged flight data recorder has been deemed unrecoverable for data extraction domestically,” said South Korea’s deputy minister for civil aviation, Joo Jong-wan.

“It was agreed today to transport it to the United States for analysis in collaboration with the US National Transportation Safety Board.” Joo earlier said both of the plane’s black boxes were retrieved, and for the cockpit voice recorder “the initial extraction has already been completed”.

“Based on this preliminary data, we plan to start converting it into audio format,” he said, meaning investigators would be able to hear the pilots’ final communications. The second black box, the flight data recorder, “was found with a missing connector”, Joo said.

Officials initially pointed to a bird strike as a possible cause of the disaster, but they have since said the probe was also examining a concrete barrier at the end of the runway, which dramatic video showed the plane colliding with before bursting into flames.

A special inspection of all Boeing 737-800 models operated by local carriers was examining their landing gear after it “failed to deploy” in this case, said the director general for aviation safety policy, Yoo Kyeong-soo.

Published in Dawn, January 2nd, 2025