Muan, Jan 3 || South Korea's government investigators on Friday recovered the aircraft engine from the Jeju Air crash as they are focusing on determining the cause of the accident that claimed 179 lives this week.
Investigators of the Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board have retrieved the engine of the crashed B737-800 from the accident site at Muan International Airport and transported it to a secure location for analysis, according to officials.
The government is also working to recover the tail section of the aircraft. Authorities briefly halted the process after blood traces were discovered inside the fuselage.
Officials plan to determine whether the blood belongs to a passenger or an animal, such as a bird, through detailed forensic analysis.
Additionally, work on converting the audio from the cockpit voice recorder into text is nearing completion, officials said.
The aircraft's Flight Data Recorder (FDR) was found to be partially damaged, making data extraction impossible on-site. Officials plan to send the FDR to the US National Transportation Safety Board in Washington for analysis on Monday.