The black boxes of the passenger jetliner that crashed in South Korea last month killing 179 people stopped recording about four minutes before the crash, South Korean officials said Saturday.
After analyzing the devices, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board concluded that both the flight data and cockpit voice recorders stopped working about four minutes before the crash, the South Korean Transportation Ministry said.
The Boeing 737-800 operated by Jeju Air skidded off a runway in the South Korean town of Muan on Dec. 29 after its landing gear failed to deploy, slamming into a concrete structure and bursting into flames, killing all but two of the 181 people on board.
Rescue team members work at the site of a plane crash at Muan International Airport in Muan, South Korea on Dec. 31, 2024. Ahn Young-joon / AP
South Korean officials also sent the black boxes to the NTSB for closer examination after discovering that some of the data was missing.
The transportation ministry said it wasn’t immediately clear why the devices failed to record data in the last four minutes.