Cockpit voice recorder from ill-fated plane crash found
Debris from the crashed Boeing 737-800 jet is being numbered.
One of the black boxes from the ill-fated China Eastern's Flight 5735 that crashed in the mountains on Monday has been found, an aviation official confirmed yesterday.
Though severely damaged, investigators found it to be the cockpit voice recorder of the Boeing 737-800 aircraft, Zhu Tao, an official with the Civil Aviation Administration of China, told a media briefing.
The data storage units in the black box are relatively complete despite some damage, Zhu said.
The black box is being sent to Beijing, Zhu said.
Rescuers have also found traces of human remains at the site.
One of the black boxes from the ill-fated China Eastern's Flight 5735 that crashed in the mountains on Monday has been found.
Geophysical prospecting equipment was deployed at the accident site yesterday to find the other black box recorder, Mao Yanfeng, director of the Civil Aviation Accident Investigation Center said.
The search radius has also been expanded.
"The sharp descent of the aircraft while in cruise mode is very rare, so we want to find the recorders as early as possible to understand the cause of the accident," Mao said.
The Boeing 737-800 disappeared from the radar at 2:23pm after it took off from Kunming in southwest China's Yunnan Province at 1:16pm to Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province.
The air traffic controller at Guangzhou found the aircraft dropping altitude dramatically at 2:20pm from its cruise altitude of 8,900 meters.
Family members and relatives of the passengers arrive at Lucun Village in Tengxian County.
It crashed in Tengxian County of Wuzhou City in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The flight had 123 passengers on board. The crew included three pilots, five flight attendants, and one security guard.
The role of weather in the crash was ruled out. The pilots were also communicating normally with the air traffic controllers since the flight took off from Kunming.
Sun Shiying, the president of China Eastern's Yunnan branch, said the carrier had been following strict maintenance requirements since the aircraft was delivered to them in June 2015. All the necessary airworthiness requirements were met before take-off.
Sun said the three pilots were healthy, experienced, and shared a family-like camaraderie between them. The captain of Flight MU5735 had 6,709 flying hours, and the chief co-pilot had 31,769 flying hours, according to Sun. The other co-pilot had a flying time of 556 hours.
Senior aviation officials talk to the media in Wuzhou City in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on Wednesday.
A CCTV video footage of the search operation.
China Eastern has grounded all its Boeing 737-800 aircraft after the accident. Sun stated that the measure was an emergency response and posed no questions on the type of aircraft.
He said the carrier had sufficient capacity to ensure the flight operations were unaffected by the grounding.
According to statistics, domestic airlines operate about 1,400 Boeing 737-800 aircraft, about 37 percent of the total fleet.
Guangxi has dispatched 500 fire-fighting and rescue teams. They are equipped with metal detectors and safety ropes for a sweeping search of the mountains, said He Rong, the commander of the team.
Rescuers have so far combed a total area of 45,200 square meters. However, the search-and-rescue efforts were hampered by heavy downpours early yesterday, posing the risk of landslides, He said.
Grief-stricken relatives of those on board visited the crash site, among them was a retiree surnamed Zhang from Shenzhen whose eyes filled with tears as he told Reuters that his nephew was on the flight.
"I hope the country can thoroughly investigate this matter and find out whether it was the manufacturer's fault or it was a maintenance problem," Zhang said.
