Seoul: South Korean investigators probing a Jeju Air crash which killed 179 people in the worst aviation disaster on its soil said Wednesday they will send one of the retrieved black boxes to the United States for analysis.
The Boeing 737-800 was carrying 181 people from Thailand to South Korea Sunday when it issued a mayday call and belly-landed before hitting a barrier and bursting into flames, killing everyone aboard except two flight attendants pulled from the burning wreckage.
South Korean and US investigators, including from Boeing, have been combing the crash site in southwestern Muan since the disaster.
“The damaged flight data recorder has been deemed unrecoverable for data extraction domestically,” said South Korea’s deputy minister for civil aviation, Joo Jong-wan.
“It was agreed today to transport it to the United States for analysis in collaboration with the US National Transportation Safety Board.”
Joo earlier said both of the plane’s black boxes were retrieved, and for the cockpit voice recorder “the initial extraction has already been completed.”
“Based on this preliminary data, we plan to start converting it into audio format,” he said, meaning investigators would be able to hear the pilots’ final communications.
The second black box, the flight data recorder, “was found with a missing connector,” Joo said.
Officials initially pointed to a bird strike as a possible cause of the disaster, but they have since said the probe was also examining a concrete barrier at the end of the runway, which dramatic video showed the Boeing 737-800 colliding with before bursting into flames.
They also said that a special inspection of all Boeing 737-800 models operated by local carriers was examining their landing gear after questions over a possible mechanical failure in the crash.
The ongoing inspections are “focusing mainly on the landing gear, which failed to deploy properly in this case,” said the director general for aviation safety policy, Yoo Kyeong-soo.
Local media reported the landing gear had deployed properly on Jeju Air Flight 2216’s first failed landing attempt at Muan airport before failing on the second.
The issue “will likely be examined by the Accident Investigation Board through a comprehensive review of various testimonies and evidence during the investigation process,” the ministry of land, which oversees civil aviation, said at a briefing.
At Muan airport, hundreds of people queued up Wednesday — a public holiday in the South — to pay their respects at a memorial altar set up to honor the victims.
So many people came to the memorial that the queue stretched for hundreds of meters and the local cell phone network was overloaded, local media reported.
Local officials sent out a safety alert asking mourners to go to a different memorial, as the one at the airport was too busy. Other altars for the victims have been set up nationwide.
Inside the airport, where families have been camped out since the accident, a medical space has been set up to administer IV drips to grieving relatives, many unable to eat due to stress, an official said during a briefing.
Officials have said the bodies were extensively damaged by the crash, making the work of identifying remains slow and immensely difficult, while investigators had to preserve crash-site evidence.
But the country’s acting president Choi Sang-mok, who has been in office less than a week, said Wednesday the process had finally been completed, and that more bodies had been handed over to relatives so that they could hold funerals.
“Our investigators, along with the US National Transportation Safety Board and the manufacturer, are conducting a joint investigation into the cause of the accident,” Choi said at a disaster response meeting.
“A comprehensive analysis and review of the aircraft’s structure and the black box data will reveal the cause of the accident,” Choi added.
The US investigators had arrived Monday and headed straight to Muan, with the initial on-site joint probe focusing on a navigation system known as a localizer that assists in aircraft landings.
The localizer, installed on a concrete structure at Muan International Airport, is the barrier that has been blamed for exacerbating the severity of the Jeju Air crash.
The plane was largely carrying holidaymakers back from year-end trips to Bangkok, with all passengers Korean nationals except for two Thais.
South Korea to send Jeju Air crash black box to US
https://arab.news/82bmn
South Korea to send Jeju Air crash black box to US
- South Korean and US investigators, including from Boeing, have been combing the crash site in southwestern Muan
- Officials initially pointed to a bird strike as a possible cause of the disaster
Trump vows ‘turnaround for the ages’ in State of the Union
- “As president, I will make peace wherever I can — but I will never hesitate to confront threats to America wherever we must”
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump boasted Tuesday of a “turnaround for the ages” in a State of the Union speech, seeking to reverse his dismal polls and see off mounting challenges at home and abroad ahead of crucial midterm elections.
Arriving to address a joint session of Congress, Trump was welcomed with cheers and a standing ovation from Republicans — while Democrats remained seated in protest.
“My fellow Americans, our nation is back bigger, better, richer and stronger than ever before,” Trump said.
The 79-year-old hoped the primetime stage will help him to sell voters on the achievements of a breakneck and deeply divisive first year back in power.
Trump is deep underwater in opinion polls and Republicans fear they could lose their tiny majority in the House to the Democrats — paralyzing the rest of Trump’s second term and exposing him to a possible third impeachment.
The Republican however struck a defiant tone in the first official State of the Union of his second term.
“Tonight, after just one year, I can say with dignity and pride that we have achieved a transformation like no one has ever seen before, and a turnaround for the ages,” Trump said.
And he sought to seize on national enthusiasm over Team USA’s gold medal winning Olympic ice hockey performance, inviting the players to join him on the floor of the Chamber to massive cheers and chants of “USA.”
He then announced he was awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the highest civilian honor — to the team’s goalie.
The New York Times said at least 40 Democrats were set to skip the speech.
‘Confront threats to America’
As US naval and air forces massed around Iran, Trump struck a tough posture.
There was intense scrutiny over whether Trump would use the speech to announce his next moves in Iran, where he has threatened to use force to crush the country’s nuclear ambitions.
“As president, I will make peace wherever I can — but I will never hesitate to confront threats to America wherever we must,” Trump was to say, according to the excerpts.
He also boasted that Venezuela, where US forces toppled longtime strongman Nicolas Maduro in January, was now shipping oil to the United States.
Long speech
Speculation mounted that the speech could be as long as three hours — far outstripping the hour and 40 minutes that Trump gave in the longest ever speech to lawmakers last year.
The annual speech to Congress is a rare chance to appear on all the major television networks simultaneously — and Trump is hoping to take advantage to shift the country’s mood ahead of November’s Midterms.
Trump has been battered by a series of blows in the second year of his second term, most recently with the Supreme Court’s striking down of his trade tariffs policy.
Trump, who earlier branded the court’s justices “fools and lapdogs” over the tariff ruling, briefly shook hands with several of the justices in attendance but went on in his speech to declare their ruling “very unfortunate.”
The billionaire has also been rocked by a backlash by the killing of two US citizens in immigration raids in Minneapolis, the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, and a new partial government shutdown.
A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll published on Sunday showed his approval rating at 39 percent. Only 41 percent approved of his handling of the economy overall, and just 32 percent on inflation.
Hockey players, Epstein victims
Adding to the interest were guests that both Republicans and Democrats brought to watch the address from the gallery, part of a long tradition.
In addition to inviting the men’s ice hockey team, Trump announced that the women’s team — which also won gold at the Olympics — would be coming to the White House.
This came after the team said it would not attend the State of the Union amid controversy over Trump’s public joke to the men’s team about having to bring the women too.
Two Democratic members of the House of Representatives said they were bringing as guests the family members of a victim of Epstein’s alleged sex-trafficking ring.
