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Accident investigators in South Korea have extracted data from one of the two black boxes retrieved from the 737 that crashed at the weekend.
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The country’s Deputy Transport Minister, Joo Jong-wan, said its contents were now being converted into an audio format, while the second box, the flight data recorder, was being sent to the US for analysis after it was damaged.
The Jeju 737-800 burst into flames in Muan, South Korea, on Sunday after skidding off the runway, wheels up, and crashing into a structure containing the instrument landing system.
In total, 175 passengers were on board, including 173 South Koreans and two Thai nationals, alongside six crew.
“The damaged flight data recorder has been deemed unrecoverable for data extraction domestically,” Joo said. “It was agreed today to transport it to the United States for analysis in collaboration with the US National Transportation Safety Board.”
Meanwhile, the country’s acting president, Choi Sang-mok, said investigators would conduct a fair and objective investigation into the incident and revealed funeral procedures had already begun following the identification of all 179 victims. So far, 43 bodies have been released.
“The most urgent matter at present is to return the victims to their families,” he said.
Airport authorities have also set up a temporary altar and organised buses for victims’ relatives to pay their respects at the crash site.
However, days after the incident, confusion still surrounds the crash’s primary cause despite footage showing an apparent bird strike.
Critics have argued that damage to the engine would have been unlikely to prevent the landing gear or flaps from lowering, which would have slowed down the aircraft on the runway.
Christian Beckert, a flight safety expert and Lufthansa pilot, told Reuters: “It’s really, really very rare and very unusual not to lower the gear because there are independent systems where we can lower the gear with an alternate system.”
Geoffrey Dell, a local airline safety expert, added that he’d never seen a bird strike prevent the landing gear from being extended.
Meanwhile, David Learmount, a former RAF instructor, described the placement of the building housing the instrument landing system as “verging on criminal”.
“Very little damage is being done to the aeroplane as it skids down the runway, goes off the end, then it comes to this object here [the wall],” he told the UK’s Sky News.
“He carried off as good a landing as he possibly could, and when he got to the end of the landing run, the aircraft was substantially undamaged, and there was no fire.
“And then the aircraft hit something really hard, burst into flames, and that’s what killed the people on board.”
The aircraft, though, was travelling the opposite way down the runway on its failed second approach, and Minister Joo insisted the structure was built to industry standards.
The two survivors were both identified as members of the crew who have severe but not immediately life-threatening injuries.
Overall, the victims included three generations of the same family, while the youngest was a three-year-old boy.
