The black boxes of the Jeju Air plane that crash-landed at Muan International Airport last month failed to record the final four minutes before the collision, investigators confirmed.
The Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board (ARAIB) investigating the accident reported on Jan. 11 that an analysis by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) showed that both the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR) stopped recording about four minutes before the aircraft collided with the localizer. The board plans to investigate the cause of the data loss.
While the CVR and FDR data are critical for the investigation, the ARAIB emphasized that the process will also involve examining other evidence to determine the exact cause of the accident.
The ARAIB sent both the CVR and FDR to the NTSB in Washington for analysis on Jan. 6. The FDR could not be analyzed domestically due to damage to the connector between the power source and data storage unit. The CVR was also sent to the U.S. to ensure cross-verification and reliability. Initially, it was reported that only the FDR was sent, but the ARAIB later confirmed that the CVR was also included. Data extraction and analysis took place from Jan. 7 to 11 under the supervision of two ARAIB investigators.
