The “black boxes” from the crashed South Korean plane stopped recording about four minutes before the disaster, officials said.

Seoul, South Korea
CNN
—

The flight recorders from the passenger jet that crashed in South Korea last month, killing more than 170 people, stopped working minutes before the plane landed belly-up and exploded on the runway, investigators said. which is Saturday.

Officials investigating the country’s deadliest aviation accident in nearly three decades hope information from the so-called black boxes will shed light on why Jeju Air flight 7C 2216 from Bangkok landed in the belly of Muan International Airport on December 29, which exploded into a ball of fire.

The disaster killing 179 passengers and crew. Two people were saved.

But South Korea’s transport ministry said Saturday that the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR) from the Boeing 737-800 stopped working about four minutes before the crash.

In a statement, the ministry said it was unclear why the devices stopped recording, adding that it was working to determine the cause.

“CVR and FDR data are important data for accident investigations, but accident investigations are conducted through investigation and analysis of various data, so we plan to do our best to accurately identify the cause by accident,” said the ministry.

The cockpit voice recorder was first analyzed locally and later sent to the United States for cross-checking, the ministry said.

The flight data recorder, which was damaged and missing a connector, sent to the National Transportation Safety Board in the US last week for analysis, after South Korean authorities concluded that they could not retrieve data from the device, due to damage.

CNN has contacted the NTSB for comment.

The crash was the country’s deadliest since 1997, when a Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 crashed in the jungles of Guam, killing 228.

It is not yet clear what causes this, with the INVESTIGATIONS expected to take months.

Footage of the crash shows that neither the rear nor the front landing gear was visible during the crash-landing.

Before the emergency landing, the pilot made a mayday call and used the terms “bird strike” and “go-around,” according to officials, who also said the control tower alerted the pilot to the birds. in that place.

Another point of DISPUTES is the concrete embankment that the plane hit on landing. Many airports do not have similar structures so close to runways, according to aviation experts.

South Korean police last week also raided Jeju Air’s office in Seoul and the operator of Muan International Airport as part of their investigation, Reuters reported.