On December 29, 2024, we saw a horrifying accident, whereby a Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 crashed while landing at Muan International Airport (MWX), killing 179 people. It’s the deadliest aviation accident globally since 2018, and the deadliest aviation accident on Korean soil in history. The country’s transport minister has even announced plans to resign over the incident.
An investigation into the cause of the accident was immediately launched, and there’s now a pretty major update, as flagged by Reuters. On the one hand, it’s a major setback, though on the other hand, it’s also a major clue…
Jeju Air 737 “black box” stopped recording before crash
Airliners have “black boxes,” as they’re called (despite not being black), which contain flight data and cockpit voice recorders. These are typically crucial in piecing together the sequence of events when there’s an accident. It allows investigators to get a sense of the aircraft’s movements, the inputs pilots were making, and to hear what was being said in the cockpit.
Unfortunately there’s bad news on that front, as the flight data and cockpit voice recorder both stopped recording roughly four minutes before the aircraft hit a concrete structure at the end of the runway, which ultimately caused the plane to burst into flames.
The “black box” was first analyzed in South Korea, where investigators found some data to be missing. Then they sent the device to the National Transportation Safety Board laboratory in the United States, where the same problem was found.
This is of course a major setback for the investigation, but it’s also a crucial clue as to what may have happened.
Data stopped recording the same time as bird strike
Four minutes before the aircraft had an accident, the pilots told air traffic controllers that they had suffered a bird strike, and declared an emergency. So the timing of that coincides with when the “black boxes” stopped recording data.
The flight data and cockpit voice recorder being cut off around that time suggests that the aircraft may have lost all power, including backup power. This is incredibly rare, so that’s quite a twist in the investigation.
Up until now, one of the most bizarre aspects of the investigation has been that the aircraft seemed to be performing an emergency landing without even attempting to deploy gear, and without using spoilers. If the aircraft had a full loss of power, that would explain why.
Based on what we know about the sequence of events, around six minutes before the accident, air traffic control had warned the pilots of “bird activity,” at which point the pilots abandoned their landing attempt, and initiated a go-around. Then two minutes later, they declared an emergency, due to a bird strike.
At that point the aircraft didn’t line up to land on the same runway as initially intended, but rather took a sharp turn, and approached the runway in the other direction, whereby it had a crash landing without gear.
What a horrible and tragic situation. While we might not ever know exactly what was going on in the cockpit in the minutes before the disaster, a potential full loss of power would certainly explain a lot…
Bottom line
The Jeju Air Boeing 737 that had a crash landing in South Korea is missing data from the “black box” for the last four minutes of the flight, coinciding with when the aircraft reportedly suffered a bird strike. This is leading investigators to believe that the aircraft suffered a rare full loss of power, as that would also explain why the aircraft landed without the gear down, and also without spoilers.
While not having black box data will make it hard to know exactly what happened in the final minutes of the flight, it’s perhaps the biggest clue in the investigation so far.
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