The site of Sunday’s South Korean budget airline Jeju Air’s plane crash is being combed through by U.S. investigators, with some from the aircraft’s manufacturer.
All but two of the 181 people aboard the Boeing 737-800 died, making it South Korea’s most fatal plane crash in decades. Investigators are hoping evidence collected from the scene will help them figure out why the pilot attempted the landing after declaring an emergency.
A pre-flight inspection found “no issues,” the airline said, according to the BBC.
Flight data like speed, altitude, fuel levels and voice recordings from the cockpit will be examined from the plane’s two separately located flight recording devices, most commonly referred to as black boxes, The Guardian reported.
Air safety experts on Tuesday questioned the placement of an airport embankment into which the passenger jet slammed after skidding past the end of the runway, as video showed.
Comments in the airport’s operating manual, uploaded early in 2024, said the embankment was too close to the end of the runway and recommended that the location of equipment be reviewed during a planned expansion, Reuters reported.
PLANE VEERS OFF AIRPORT RUNWAY IN SOUTH KOREA AND CRASHES, KILLING 179: REPORTS
The South Korean government has launched safety inspections on all the 101 Boeing 737-800s in the country. The Transport Ministry said authorities are looking at maintenance and operation records during five days of safety checks that are to run until Friday.
The ministry said that a delegation of eight U.S. investigators – one from the Federal Aviation Administration, three from the National Transportation Safety Board and four from Boeing – visited the crash site on Tuesday. The results of their examination were not immediately available.
While it will likely take months to determine the cause of the crash, Lee Jeong-hyeon, chief of the Muan fire station, previously said workers were looking into various possibilities, including whether the aircraft was struck by birds.
“A bird strike on an engine might shut an engine down, but there’s so many redundant systems there, it just doesn’t make sense. We’re not in the dark, but we know the runway is 9,200 feet. It’s a very long runway. It [the plane] did come in hot and high, hot and fast. We don’t know why that was the real issue,” aviation consultant Mike Boyd told Fox News Sunday.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
