Sunday, January 12

Investigators have found that the black boxes aboard the Jeju Air plane that exploded in South Korea several weeks ago failed to record data for the last four minutes of the flight, adding to the mystery of the crash.

Jeju Air Flight 2216, a Boeing 737-800, was flying from Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi International Airport to Muan International Airport, located in the South Jeolla province of South Korea, on December 29 when issues onboard caused the plane to attempt an emergency landing. The plane rapidly skidded across the runway upon landing without any landing gear, and it exploded upon impact with a concrete wall near the runway. 181 people were onboard the flight, 175 passengers and 6 crewmembers, but only two crewmembers survived the devastating incident.

Investigations into the crash quickly ramped up, and the black boxes were found to be intact just days after the crash. The black boxes consist of the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, and they are crucial to any sort of investigation into a plane disaster. Due to this, officials were confident that the cause of the crash would be easier to determine because the black boxes had been found.

However, this did not prove to be the case. First, the data confirmed that the pilot had radioed mayday for help and reported a bird strike, proving the potential cause for the crash. Bird strikes can be extremely dangerous to planes, leading to broken wings and engines, damaged brake lines, and holes in the fuselage of the plane--- bird strikes alone killed over 490 people worldwide between 1988 and 2023.

Then, the pilot's voice can be heard stating that he would abort his first landing attempt and try again, but the black boxes fail to record any sort of data for the last four minutes of the flight. These last four minutes were crucial to the investigation, because the pilot makes several curious decisions that can only be determined with the voice recording. Due to the failed landing attempt, the pilot begins to circle around and try again, but he cuts off halfway through the circle and comes in a second time from the opposite direction.

The plane touches down without any landing gear on, yet the pilot never indicated in his radio message that the landing gear had been damaged. The aircraft proceeds to slide off the runway due to its immense speed and smashes into the concrete barrier at high speed, causing an eruption of fire and smoke.

Experts have confirmed that black boxes can be damaged in crashes, but it is highly unlikely-- black boxes are designed to withstand extremely strong airplane crashes, intense heat, and even long-term deep-sea pressure. The real question is, where did the data from the black box go? Additional studies and research is being done on the black box to see if it is holding that data somewhere inside or if there is another way to access it, but there is a chance that the data has somehow been lost forever.

Now, investigators are being forced to solve the puzzle using the pieces of radio messages and other information that they have, but they will not be able to get as accurate of a recount of the incident as they could with the data. They believe that the plane could have lost an engine as the flight was circling, forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing, and the landing gear could have also been damaged by the bird strike.

Fact of the Day: It is not exactly true that no two snowflakes can be alike-- it is just extremely rare. In 1988, Nancy Knight, a scientist for the National Center for Atmospheric Research, found two identical snowflakes while studying snow crystals from a Wisconsin storm.

Quote of the Day: One word spoken from the heart is worth a thousand clever remarks. (Marty Rubin)

Word of the Day (Merriam-Webster): Cozen (verb, KUZ-un) - To cozen someone is to deceive, win over, or induce them to do something by coaxing or trickery.

In a Sentence: The organization cozened scores of people by persuading them to participate in a fraudulent investment scheme.