South Korean investigators have scheduled their first public hearing into the Jeju Air passenger jet crash that killed all but two of the 181 people onboard last year.
At the hearing, on Dec. 4 and 5 in Seoul, the investigators are expected to present new material from the ongoing investigation. Nearly a year after the plane skidded off a runway, hit a wall and exploded into a fireball, the cause of the crash remains unclear.
Many families of victims have raised questions about the investigating board’s credibility, saying it needs to be independent of the Transportation Ministry. They have even demanded that the panel cease its work until it can prove its trustworthiness.
But officials said they were committed to pursuing the facts of the case impartially.
“One of the purposes of the public hearing is to provide transparency into the investigation so far,” Kim Gihun, director general of the panel, the Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board, said on Tuesday. He added that it was important to ensure that the public trusted its findings.
The Jeju Air disaster, in the southwestern county of Muan, was the deadliest plane crash on South Korean soil, and the inquiry is a challenge for the investigating board, which was established in 2002. The hearing would come ahead of an interim report mandated by international authorities to be released on the crash’s first anniversary.
In a Nov. 6 letter, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, the investigating board laid out plans for the hearing. It was sent to local authorities, airport officials, the airline’s chief executive, engineering and ecology experts, and the victims’ families.
Mr. Kim, who confirmed that a letter had been sent, said that investigators were expected to question officials and experts about why the plane had crashed.
The inquiry into the crash, on Dec. 29, has looked at several possible factors, including a reported bird strike, the role of a concrete berm at the end of the runway and the plane’s engines.
The first day of the hearing, which is expected to be livestreamed, will focus on the birds and the berm, according to the letter. The second day, the letter noted, will be dedicated to the flight, the Boeing aircraft and its engines.
One of the biggest setbacks for investigators has been the absence of flight recorder data from the last four minutes before the crash because the device had mysteriously stopped working.
The board has faced skepticism from the relatives of the victims. In July, the organization representing the families forced Transport Ministry officials to cancel the release of an intermediate report into the crash after they angrily disrupted a news conference and called the investigators biased.
“The families distrust all investigations by the Transport Ministry’s Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board,” Kim Yu-jin, who lost her parents and brother in the crash and who leads the main organization representing the families, said on Tuesday in a statement to The Times. “We have asked them to stop investigating and have absolutely no confidence in the investigations being conducted or the findings being released.”
Ms. Kim and other victims’ relatives have appealed to South Korea’s president and lawmakers to order the public release of all data gathered from the inquiry. She has also demanded changes to the investigating board because it reports to the Transport Ministry, which oversees the crash site and aviation policy.
The ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In May, dozens of families asked the South Korean police to investigate 15 officials and aviation industry executives, including Jeju Air’s chief executive and the country’s transport minister, over aviation safety violations. Some victims’ families have filed lawsuits against Boeing in the United States over the past few months.
John Yoon is a Times reporter based in Seoul who covers breaking and trending news.
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