Data recorder is damaged but cockpit audio recorder is intact
MADRID, 29 Dic. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The South Korean authorities have confirmed that the two ‘black boxes’ of the Jeju Air plane that crashed this Sunday, the worst recent air disaster in the country’s history, with 179 dead and two injured, have been recovered but one of them presents significant damage and do not rule out that it will have to be analyzed in the United States.
The plane, with 181 people on board, crashed into a wall at the Muan airport, in the southwest of the country, after landing on its belly and without the gear deployed. Previously, the control tower had noted the impact of a flock of birds against the device.
Experts consulted by the official South Korean Yonhap news agency admit that a sufficiently forceful impact could have caused a failure in the hydraulic system, while other aviation professionals consider that the probability of such a coincidence is difficult to assume.
Damage to the data recorder could delay the crash investigation for weeks, sources from the South Korean Air Transport Board told Yonhap. “Decoding the flight data recorder could take up to a month,” they say.
In the worst case and if it is necessary to send it to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) of the United States for decoding, the process “could take up to six months.”