Crash investigators focus on Muan airport runway barrier

Investigators turn to black boxes for vital clues

- Justin McCurry Osaka Oliver Holmes

South Korean authorities seeking answers to the country's deadliest plane disaster are investigating the role of a hardened barrier at the end of a runway that the jet hit after crash-landing on Sunday.

The structure may only partly explain the sequence of events that led the Jeju Air flight to end in such a violent manner.

All but two of the 181 people onboard died when the plane slid down the runway at Muan international airport and burst into flames after hitting a dirt and concrete embankment built to house navigation equipment.

A report by the Chosun Ilbo newspaper yesterday said the airport's operating manual, uploaded early in 2024, had noted that the raised ground was too close to the end of the runway, at 199 metres (652 feet).

Airport officials responded at the time by saying that "adjustments

As investigators set to work unpicking the cause of South Korea's devastating plane crash, the black boxes carried on Jeju Air's flight 7C2216 will be of prime importance, with retrieval of data from the cockpit voice recorder already under way.

However, reports in South Korean media suggest the flight data recorder is partially damaged, with officials saying that decoding it could take a month or more.

Among key questions are why the Boeing 737-800 stopped broadcasting automated tracking data shortly before it hit the runway, why its landing gear failed to deploy, and whether the crash could have been down to a bird strike, given air traffic controllers had issued just such a warning as the plane approached the runway.

It has already emerged that the aircraft aborted its first attempt at landing and issued a distress call before its second, while video footage suggests wing flaps were not deployed to slow it down.

Frank E Turney, chair of the Aviation Department for Capitol Technology University in the US, said that while the black boxes can be helpful in an investigation, they are only part of the puzzle.