The pilot of an Asiana Airlines passenger jet that made a hard landing at Hiroshima Airport last month tried to abort and go around for a second attempt two seconds before the plane clipped a communications tower short of the runway, the Japan Transport Safety Board said.

Investigators are looking into whether the pilot acted appropriately and whether bad weather played a part in the April 14 incident, in which Asiana Flight 162 from Seoul ripped through a localizer array, slammed into the runway and then veered onto grass, coming to rest damaged and with some of its passengers injured.

"Objectively speaking, the pilot tried to execute a procedure for the aircraft to make a landing again," chief investigator Koji Tsuji said on Wednesday.

He did not reveal what was said on the cockpit voice recorder.

The pilot switched off autopilot around 6 km from the airport at 8:04 p.m. The aircraft then started flying at a lower altitude than normal, although no sudden descent was recorded, according to the transport safety board.

At around 8:05 p.m., the pilot attempted to power up the engines and initiate a re-ascent, but two seconds later the jet struck the localizer array 325 meters from the runway.

Visibility deteriorated sharply to around 350 meters at the time of the incident, from a height of round 1,300 meters, when the autopilot was switched off, according to local observatory data.

The accident left the airport closed for days.