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.
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.