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On December 28th, Jeju Air flight 7C 2216 crashed upon landing at Muan International Airport (MWN) after flying from Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport (BKK). The Boeing 737-800 had 181 passengers and crew on board. The fiery crash took the lives of 179 people with only two survivors. Investigators were hoping for some additional insight into what happened, but four minutes of critical recordings are missing just before impact with a concrete structure.
The voice recorder was analyzed in South Korea and when data was missing it was sent to a US National Transportation Safety Board laboratory for further investigation. The aircraft had suffered a bird strike around four minutes before it crashed. The strike was reported to air traffic control, but what happened next is still a mystery.
The black boxes holding the flight data and cockpit voice recorders for the crashed Jeju Air flight that left 179 people dead stopped recording four minutes before the disaster, Korea's transport ministry said Saturday.
"The analysis revealed that both the CVR and FDR data were… pic.twitter.com/nvp77GU5DY
— Breaking Aviation News & Videos (@aviationbrk) January 11, 2025
One theory is that the aircraft lost all power including backup power and that is what caused the data loss. It could also explain why the aircraft landed without attempting to deploy landing gear. The Guardian reports that Sim Jai-dong, a former transport ministry accident investigator, said “the missing data from the crucial final minutes was surprising and suggested all power including backup may have been cut, which is rare.”
The investigation continues and hopefully some answers will be found. This was the deadliest crash since 2018 globally and cost more lives than any other ever in South Korea.
Anthony’s Take: This is such a sad incident and one with lots of answers remaining. I hope that more is learned as the recorders are continued to be evaluated.
(Featured Image Credit: Yonhap News.)
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Advertiser & Editorial Disclosure: The Bulkhead Seat earns an affiliate commission for anyone approved through the links above This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. We work to provide the best publicly available offers to our readers. We frequently update them, but this site does not include all available offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities.
1 comment
Jeez. I thought that there were enough redundancies in the black box system to avoid such a situation. I simply don’t know enough to know whether it’s appropriate to blame Boeing for this or not.