Black boxes from South Korea plane crash failed to record final 4 minutes, officials say [Video]

The black boxes of a Boeing jetliner that crashed in South Korea last month stopped recording about four minutes before the accident, South Korean officials said Saturday, possibly complicating investigations into the cause of the disaster that killed 179 people.

After analyzing the devices, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) concluded that both the flight data and cockpit voice recorders stopped working about four minutes before the crash, the South Korean Transportation Ministry said.

The Boeing 737-800 operated by Jeju Air skidded off a runway in the South Korean town of Muan on Dec. 29 after its landing gear failed to deploy, slamming into a concrete structure and bursting into flames, killing all but two of the 181 people on board.

After initially analyzing the black boxes, South Korean officials sent the devices to the NTSB for closer examination upon discovering that some of the data was missing. The …