Jeju Air ‘Black Box’ Data Missing from Last 4 Minutes before Crash, South Korea Ministry Says

This undated handout photo taken at an undisclosed location and released on January 1, 2025 by South Korea's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport shows the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) retrieved from Jeju Air flight 2216 which crashed killing 179 people. (Handout / South Korea's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport / AFP)
This undated handout photo taken at an undisclosed location and released on January 1, 2025 by South Korea's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport shows the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) retrieved from Jeju Air flight 2216 which crashed killing 179 people. (Handout / South Korea's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport / AFP)
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Jeju Air ‘Black Box’ Data Missing from Last 4 Minutes before Crash, South Korea Ministry Says

This undated handout photo taken at an undisclosed location and released on January 1, 2025 by South Korea's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport shows the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) retrieved from Jeju Air flight 2216 which crashed killing 179 people. (Handout / South Korea's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport / AFP)
This undated handout photo taken at an undisclosed location and released on January 1, 2025 by South Korea's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport shows the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) retrieved from Jeju Air flight 2216 which crashed killing 179 people. (Handout / South Korea's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport / AFP)

The flight data and cockpit voice recorders on the Jeju Air jet that crashed on Dec. 29 stopped recording about four minutes before the airliner hit a concrete structure at South Korea's Muan airport, the transport ministry said on Saturday.

Authorities investigating the disaster that killed 179 people, the worst on South Korean soil, plan to analyze what caused the "black boxes" to stop recording, the ministry said in a statement.

The voice recorder was initially analyzed in South Korea, and, when data was found to be missing, sent to a US National Transportation Safety Board laboratory, the ministry said.

The damaged flight data recorder was taken to the United States for analysis in cooperation with the US safety regulator, the ministry has said.

Jeju Air 7C2216, which departed the Thai capital Bangkok for Muan in southwestern South Korea, belly-landed and overshot the regional airport's runway, exploding into flames after hitting an embankment.

The pilots told air traffic control the aircraft had suffered a bird strike and declared emergency about four minutes before it crashed into the embankment exploding in flames. Two injured crew members, sitting in the tail section, were rescued.

Two minutes before the Mayday emergency call, air traffic control gave caution for "bird activity". Declaring emergency, the pilots abandoned the landing attempt and initiated a go-around.

But instead of making a full go-about, the budget airline's Boeing 737-800 jet took a sharp turn and approached the airport's single runway from the opposite end, crash-landing without landing gear deployed.

Sim Jai-dong, a former transport ministry accident investigator, said the discovery of the missing data from the crucial final minutes was surprising and suggests all power including backup may have been cut, which is rare.

The transport ministry said other data available would be used in the investigation and that it would ensure the probe is transparent and that information is shared with the victims' families.

Some members of the victims' families have said the transport ministry should not be taking the lead in the investigation but that it should involve independent experts including those recommended by the families.

The investigation of the crash has also focused on the embankment, which was designed to prop up the "localizer" system used to assist aircraft landing, including why it was built with such rigid material and so close to the end of the runway.



Zelenskiy Says Ukraine Halts Russian Troop Advance in Sumy Region

A resident walks at a street near a building damaged by Russian missile strikes, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Sumy, Ukraine June 13, 2025. REUTERS/Sofiia Gatilova
A resident walks at a street near a building damaged by Russian missile strikes, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Sumy, Ukraine June 13, 2025. REUTERS/Sofiia Gatilova
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Zelenskiy Says Ukraine Halts Russian Troop Advance in Sumy Region

A resident walks at a street near a building damaged by Russian missile strikes, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Sumy, Ukraine June 13, 2025. REUTERS/Sofiia Gatilova
A resident walks at a street near a building damaged by Russian missile strikes, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Sumy, Ukraine June 13, 2025. REUTERS/Sofiia Gatilova

Ukrainian forces have stopped Russian troops advancing in the northeastern Sumy region and are now battling to regain control along the border with Russia, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.

In remarks released for publication by his office on Saturday, Zelenskiy said that Moscow has amassed about 53,000 troops in the direction of Sumy, Reuters reported.

"We are leveling the position. The fighting there is along the border. You should understand that the enemy has been stopped there. And the maximum depth at which the fighting takes place is 7 km (4.35 miles) from the border," Zelenskiy said.

Russia's troops have been focusing their assaults in the eastern Donetsk region. But since the start of the month, they have intensified their attacks in the north-east, announcing plans to create a so-called 'buffer zone' in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions.

The Russian war in Ukraine is in its fourth year, but it has intensified in recent weeks.

Ukraine conducted an audacious drone attack this month that took out multiple aircraft inside Russia and also hit the bridge connecting Russia to the annexed Crimean peninsula using underwater explosives.

Moscow ramped up its air assaults after the attack.

Zelenskiy said that Ukrainian troops had maintained their defensive lines along more than 1,000 kilometres of the frontline. He also dismissed Moscow's claims that Russian troops had crossed the administrative border into the central Ukrainian region of Dnipropetrovsk.

Zelenskiy said that Russia was sending small assault groups "to get one foot on the administrative border" and make a picture or a video, but these attacks were repelled.

Dnipropetrovsk borders three regions that are partially occupied by Russia – Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Russia now controls about one-fifth of Ukrainian territory.

Zelenskiy acknowledged that Ukraine was unable to regain all of its territory by military force and reiterated his pleas for stronger sanctions on Russia to force Moscow into negotiations to end the war.

Two rounds of peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow in Istanbul produced few results that could lead to a ceasefire and a broader peace deal. The two sides agreed only to exchange prisoners of war.

Several swaps have already been conducted this month, and Zelenskiy said he expected them to continue until June 20 or 21.

In separate remarks made on communications platform Telegram on Saturday, he said that a new group of Ukrainian prisoners of war had come home as part of another swap with Russia.

"We continue to take our people out of Russian captivity. This is the fourth exchange in a week," Zelenskiy wrote on his personal account.

Ukrainian officials responsible for exchanging prisoners said the vast majority of the soldiers released in the exchange had been held captive since 2022 with many captured during the defence of Mariupol.

The officials said Kyiv had, meanwhile, received the bodies of 1,200 of its soldiers killed in the war with Russia. The bodies were handed over to Ukraine on Friday.

"The agreement is that the exchanges will be completed, and the sides will discuss the next step," Zelenskiy said.