Summary

A Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 crashed at Muan International Airport, South Korea, killing 179 people, with only two crew members surviving. The black boxes stopped recording four minutes before the crash.

Authorities are investigating the cause of the malfunctioning black box. They suspect a bird strike, as feathers were found in one engine, and video footage confirmed a bird impact. However, the exact cause of the crash remains elusive.

Investigators are probing why the landing gear wasn’t deployed, the role of power failure in missing black box data, and the construction of the airfield wall the plane hit.

  • kcuf@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I don’t believe the APU would be usable in flight, but they should have a RAT. Also don’t black boxes have their own batteries?

    • Thrashy@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      737s don’t have RATs. According to some 737 pilots I’ve seen commenting, the APU is operable in flight, but doesn’t kick in automatically and would have required ~60 seconds to start. The main electrical generators don’t automatically restart after tripping, either, so a scenario where electric power is hypothetically available, but a panicked or overloaded flight crew don’t take the steps to bring it online, is plausible.

    • Enoril@jlai.lu
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      1 day ago

      You have normally 2 segregated electrical system (1 & 2) with, for each system, several sub-segregation (like primary, secondary, essential, secours with bus bars, contactors that can cut some non-essential systems depending on rules or switch in the overhead panel) and several sources of power (engines, apu, batteries, sometime rat).

      Black boxes don’t have battery (to dangerous, the battery could destroy the recordings when damaged and that would also require specific maintenance) but normally they have several power source. Loosing power like that is strange and could indicate a fire or a maintenance problem (on board batteries should be able to work for at least 40min without engine… but they had a running engine as far as i know… that doesn’t make any sense).

      APU can be run while flying, you must be below a certain flight level to use it (<FL100?).

    • mierdabird@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 day ago

      APU’s absolutely are usable in flight, and if the plane is ETOPS certified (I don’t know if Jeju is) then they even have to be able to start the APU at cruise altitude after cold soaking for 2+ hours