Seoul, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Investigators found bird

feathers and blood in both engines of the Jeju Air

jet that crashed in South Korea last month, killing 179 people,

a person familiar with the probe told Reuters on Friday.

The Boeing 737-800 plane, which departed from the

Thai capital Bangkok for Muan county in southwestern South

Korea, belly-landed and overshot the regional airport's runway,

bursting into flames after hitting an embankment.

Only two crew members at the tail end of the plane survived

the worst aviation disaster on South Korean soil.

About four minutes before the fatal crash, one of the pilots

reported a bird strike and declared an emergency before

initiating a go-around and attempting to land on the opposite

end of the runway, according to South Korean authorities.

Two minutes before the pilot declared the Mayday emergency

call, air traffic control had urged caution due to "bird

activity" in the area.

Investigators this month said feathers were found on one of

the engines recovered from the crash scene, adding that video

footage showed there was a bird strike on an engine.

South Korea's transport ministry declined to comment on

whether feathers and blood were found in both engines.

The plane's two black boxes - key to finding out the cause

of last month's crash on the jet - stopped recording about four

minutes before the accident, posing a challenge to the ongoing

investigation.

Sim Jai-dong, a former transport ministry accident

investigator, said on Sunday the missing data was surprising and

suggested all power, including backup, may have been cut, which

is rare.

Bird strikes that impact both engines are also rare

occurrences in aviation globally, though there have been

successful cases of pilots landing the plane without fatalities

in such situations including the "Miracle on the Hudson" river

landing in the U.S. in 2009 and a cornfield landing in Russia in

2019.