By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
Wednesday's helicopter crash that claimed the lives of all seven soldiers on board was likely caused by low-altitude flight and poor visibility caused by fog, Army officials said Thursday.
The assumption came as the chopper's cockpit voice recorder recovered from the crash site _ Yangpyeong, Gyeonggi Province ― revealed that pilots spoke of ``low-altitude'' and ``clouds,'' they said.
``Please convert to instrument flight… We keep cruising through clouds. Raise the altitude… 2,000 feet, 3,000 feet…'' (radio cutoff), one of the two pilots of the crashed UH-1H said on the recorder.
A retired Army officer, who served in a unit in Yangpyeong, said, ``When I served there, our helicopters used to fly at a lower altitude than normal helicopter flights. I guess the helicopter crashed into a mountain due to illusory effects caused by the sudden fog.''
But some military officials questioned if and why the pilots decided to conduct a low-altitude flight at midnight without proper night mission equipment such as the Global Positioning System.
Questions also linger as to whether the pilots were properly informed of weather conditions at the time.
``It was found that the weather conditions before the helicopter's takeoff were quite good with visibility of about five miles. The pilots also appeared to believe the weather conditions were good,'' an Army investigator said.
The UH-1H helicopter of the 204th Aviation Battalion crashed into Yongmun Mountain around 1:10 a.m., while returning to base after dropping off an emergency patient at a military hospital in Seongnam, just south of Seoul.
The utility helicopter was carrying two pilots, two medical officers and three enlisted soldiers.
The bodies were discovered within three hours of the crash because the search team was able to track the co-pilot's cell phone, according to the Army.
Among the victims are Capt. Jung Jae-hoon, 22, a medic, who had been married only four months, and a nurse named Sun Hyo-sun who had just returned from maternity leave.
A joint funeral service is to be held at 9:00 a.m. Friday at Seongnam Military Hospital.