South Korea plane crash investigators turn to black boxes in search for vital clues
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Experts hope flight recorders will provide answers to key questions surrounding crash in which 179 died. As investigators set to work unpicking the cause of Sunday’s devastating plane crash in South Korea, the black boxes carried on the plane will be of prime importance.
One hundred and 79 people out of the 181 onboard died in the disaster, with the victims aged from three to 78. The Korean airline’s chief executive, Kim E-bae, said he wanted “to bow my head and apologise”, according to a statement on the company’s website, adding it was “difficult to determine the cause of the accident”.
Yet experts will be hoping the flight recorders might offer crucial insights. Often called black boxes despite being orange in colour, these shoe-box-sized electronic devices are often found at the rear of an aircraft to minimise damage in the case of a crash.
However, while the devices are built to withstand extreme temperatures and underwater immersion, they are not immune from the effects of a crash. The devices store both flight data, such as speed, altitude and fuel levels, as well as voice recordings from the cockpit and other sounds including engine noise and radio transmissions. In some aircraft, both types of data are stored in the same device, while on others the data is stored in two separate devices, as appears to be the case for Jeju Air’s flight 7C2216.
