
Several pages torn from a printed operations manual for the Boeing 737-800 were discovered at the site of the deadly Jeju Air crash at Muan International Airport in South Jeolla Province, according to local news reports Friday.
On Dec. 29, a Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 from Bangkok crashed into the airport's outer wall while attempting a belly landing, leading to the deaths of 179 of the 181 people on board.
The aircraft manual, or "Quick Reference Handbook," is a thick guide spanning over 2,000 pages. Typically, two copies are provided per aircraft, with one placed at the captain’s seat and the other at the first officer’s seat.
The torn and crumpled pages discovered at the crash site contained details about the minimum distance a Boeing aircraft can travel with its landing gear extended while operating on minimal power.
Several pages also included emergency landing procedures, particularly those for ditching the aircraft in water. Only the essential pages were reportedly torn out for immediate use, indicating the urgency of the situation during the crash.
"The captain may have been trying to calculate the aircraft's remaining range and evaluate how much time they had left to respond," said professor Go Seung-hee from the department of aviation operations at Silla University in Busan.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport has officially launched an investigation to determine the exact cause of the accident. Authorities examined the cockpit voice recorder from the aircraft to extract voice data, including critical communications during the flight, for further analysis.