Jeju Air Flight 2216 Black Boxes Halted 4 Minutes Before Crash, South Korea Ministry Reveals

SEOUL — South Korea’s transport ministry announced today that the black boxes of Jeju Air flight 2216, which crashed on December 29, stopped recording four minutes before the disaster. The Boeing 737-800, en route from Thailand to Muan, South Korea, belly-landed and exploded after hitting a concrete barrier at the airport.

The ministry stated that both the flight data recorder (FDR) and cockpit voice recorder (CVR) failed to capture data in the critical moments before the crash. The localizer, a barrier at the runway’s end, has been blamed for worsening the crash’s severity.

Ongoing investigations are exploring possible causes, including a bird strike, faulty landing gear, and the runway barrier. The pilot had reported a bird strike before aborting an initial landing attempt, but the crash occurred during a second attempt when the landing gear failed to deploy.