Wuzhou, China, March 23 (BNA) A Chinese aviation official said, on Wednesday, that one of the “black box” recorders was found seriously damaged, two days after a China Eastern plane crashed in southern China with 132 people on board. board.
Mao Yanfeng, director of the accident investigation department of the Civil Aviation Authority of China, said the device was so damaged that investigators could not tell if it was the flight data recorder or the cockpit voice recorder.
He said at a press conference that all-out efforts are being made to find the other black box.
Recovering the so-called black boxes – which are usually painted orange for visibility – is key to figuring out what caused the crash. It was not clear whether the damage to the restorer would limit its usefulness.
The search for clues about why a Chinese commercial airliner suddenly crashed and crashed into a mountain in southern China earlier on Wednesday was suspended as rain swept through the field of debris and filled red dirt wounds from the plane’s fiery crash.
The researchers were using hand tools, drones and sniffer dogs in rainy conditions to comb dense forest slopes for flight data and cockpit voice recorders, as well as any human remains. The crew also worked to pump water from the crater that arose when the plane hit the ground, but their efforts were suspended in the middle of the day because small landslides were possible on the steep slopes.
The black box was found in the afternoon. The flight data recorder captures information about the aircraft’s speed, altitude, up or down direction, pilot actions, and performance of all major systems. Cockpit voice recorder captures sounds including conversations and background engine noise during flight.
China Eastern Flight 5735 was carrying 123 passengers and nine crew from Kunming in Yunnan Province to Guangzhou, an industrial hub on China’s southeast coast, when it crashed Monday afternoon outside Wuzhou city in Guangxi region. It is assumed that all 132 people on board were killed.
Investigators say it is too early to speculate on the cause. The plane went into an unexplained dive an hour after departure and stopped transmitting data 96 seconds after the crash.
Zhou Tao, director of the Aviation Safety Bureau of China Civil Aviation, said at a press conference on Tuesday evening that the air traffic controller tried to contact the pilots several times after noticing the plane’s high altitude sharply, but received no response. .
“So far, the rescue operation has not yet found any survivors,” Chu said. “The Public Security Administration has taken control of the site.”
China Eastern is headquartered in Shanghai and is one of the three largest airlines in China with more than 600 aircraft, including 109 Boeing 737-800s. China’s Ministry of Transportation said China Eastern has grounded all of its 737-800 aircraft, a move that could further disrupt domestic air travel already curtailed by the largest outbreak of COVID-19 in China since the initial peak in early 2020.
The Boeing 737-800 has been flying since 1998 and has a solid safety record. It’s an older model than the 737 Max, which has been discontinued worldwide for nearly two years after fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019.
Monday’s incident was the worst in China in more than a decade. In August 2010, an Embraer ERJ 190-100 operated by Henan Airlines hit the ground a short distance from the runway in the northeastern city of Yichun and caught fire. It carried 96 people, 44 of whom died. Investigators blamed pilot error.