S Korea to send Jeju Air crash black box to US as funeral procedures begin

The investigation into the crash of a South Korean passenger jet gathered pace on Wednesday as bereaved families began to prepare funerals after authorities finished formally identifying the 179 victims of the country's worst air disaster.

South Korean investigators said they will send one of the retrieved black boxes to the United States for analysis.

The transport ministry said South Korean investigators have extracted the data from the plane's cockpit voice recorder and will convert it into an audio file, critical information to try to explain the few minutes that led up to the crash.

South Korean and US investigators, including from Boeing, have been combing the crash site in southwestern Muan since the disaster on Sunday.

"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.

"Experts are currently conducting a final review to determine how to extract data from it."

All 175 passengers and four of the six crew members were killed on Sunday when the Jeju Air jet belly-landed at Muan International Airport in the country's southwest and slammed into a sand-and-concrete embankment at the end of the runway, where it burst into flames.

Two crew members, located near the tail of the Boeing 737-800, survived the disaster.

The government has declared a national mourning period until January 4 and the country will scale back New Year's celebrations.

The transport ministry said two more US officials arrived late on Tuesday to join a team of around two dozen investigators including from the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Federal Aviation Administration, and aircraft maker Boeing.

"They're also planning to start a visual investigation into the wreckage," Deputy Minister for Civil Aviation Joo Jong-wan told a briefing.

Bird strike or landing gear failure?

Officials have said investigators were expected to examine whether a bird strike, a failure of the landing gear to drop or problems with any other control systems played a role in the disaster.

They will also investigate the pilot's apparent rush to attempt a landing right after he had declared an emergency, officials have said.

The director general for aviation safety policy, Yoo Kyeong-soo, however, said that the ongoing inspections are "focusing mainly on the landing gear, which failed to deploy properly in this case" .

Air safety experts have also questioned if the airport embankment designed to prop up navigation equipment was built too close to the end of the runway.

South Korea's acting President Choi Sang-mok on Wednesday called for a fair and objective investigation and said funeral procedures have begun after all the victims were formally identified.

"The most urgent matter at present is to return the victims to their families," Choi told an intra-agency meeting.

Airport authorities set up an altar late on Tuesday and on Wednesday buses carried relatives of victims to the crash site so that they could pay their respects, just metres from the crashed plane's charred and broken tail - the only relatively intact part of the aircraft following the accident.

The Muan airport was brimming with mourners seeking to pay their tributes at the altar, leading to a queue of several hundred metres.

County officials sent an alert to urge visitors to go instead to a larger memorial set up in a sports complex about 9 km (5 miles) from the crash site.

It could still take several days until all bereaved relatives are able to secure the release of the bodies of their loved ones.