Investigators searching the crash site of the China Eastern plane, which killed all 132 people on board, found the plane’s black box.
Liu Lusong, a spokesman for China’s aviation authorities, told reporters that the flight recorder “MU5735 from East China was found on March 23.”
The discovery came after the head of aviation security said the doomed flight’s pilots failed to respond to repeated calls from air traffic controllers when the plane made its fatal dive into a mountainside.
A Chinese Boeing 737-800 carrying 123 passengers and nine crew members from Kunming in Yunnan province to Guangzhou crashed on Monday afternoon near the city of Wuzhou in the Guangxi region.
All 132 people on board are presumed dead after rescuers speculated that the fire that resulted from the crash “completely burned” the passengers and their property before causing damage to the surrounding forest.
Air traffic controllers tried several times to contact the pilots after seeing the plane’s sudden drop in altitude but received no response, Zhu Tao, director of the Civil Aviation Authority’s Aviation Security Bureau, said at a press conference on Tuesday evening. .
“At this point, rescuers have yet to find survivors,” Mr. Zhu said. “The Public Safety Department has taken control of the site.”
Investigators were seen inspecting the black box of the crashed Chinese plane, which was recovered on Wednesday.
Liu Lusong, a spokesman for China’s aviation authorities, told reporters that the flight recorder “MU5735 from East China was found on March 23.”
Rescuers searched for black boxes at the crash site, but the search was suspended on Wednesday due to heavy rain.
An aerial view shows scorched earth next to a huge crater at the crash site in the Guangxi area.
Shocking CCTV footage has surfaced on social media, allegedly showing the plane flying vertically towards the ground moments before the crash.
The aircraft went into an unexplained dive an hour after takeoff, suddenly plummeting 30,000 feet in two minutes before crashing into the ground at 350 mph.
Investigators, who say it’s too early to speculate about the cause of the crash, said the plane stopped transmitting data 96 seconds after it crashed.
The investigation, which Zhu said will be “very difficult,” was temporarily put on hold Wednesday after rain soaked a debris field and filled a swath of red mud created by the plane’s fire impact.
Zhu said the investigation team would make “every effort” to gather evidence and that they were focusing on finding the plane’s flight recorder.
“When analyzing the causes of the accident, we will take into account all factors,” he added.
Earlier Wednesday, searchers used hand tools, drones and search dogs in rainy conditions to comb the densely forested slopes for flight data and cockpit voice recorders, as well as any human remains.
Crews were also working to pump water out of a hole created when the plane crashed to the ground, but their efforts were halted in the middle of the morning because small landslides are possible on the steep, slippery slopes.
Video clips released by Chinese state media show small pieces of the Boeing 737-800 strewn across the area.
Each piece of debris had a number next to it, the larger ones were marked with police tape.
Mud-stained wallets, bank cards and identification cards were found.
Relatives of passengers on China Eastern Flight 5735 leave a village near the crash site on Wednesday.
Medical workers arrived at the crash site on Wednesday before heavy rain forced the search to be halted.
Local media identified the plane’s captain as Yang Hongdu, the son of a former airline pilot who aviation officials said had an “excellent” safety record.
The first officer was Zhang Zhengping, a 58-year-old man with 40 years of experience and over 30,000 hours of safe flight, the Times reported.
A rescue official reportedly said the plane was completely destroyed and the fire that resulted from the crash tore up bamboo and trees before being extinguished. China Eastern expressed “deep condolences” after confirming the death of 123 passengers and nine crew members on board, adding that all of the victims were Chinese.
Horrifying CCTV footage has surfaced on social media, allegedly showing the plane flying vertically towards the ground moments before the crash.
FlightRadar tracking data showed the aircraft was flying at 29,100 feet at 2:20 pm. It dropped to just over 9,000 feet in about two minutes, and 3,225 feet in another 20 seconds. The data points to a vertical descent at 31,000 feet per minute, or about 350 miles per hour.
The altitude data also shows that the aircraft is climbing to about 75,000 feet before starting its final descent.
The incident represents China’s deadliest plane crash in nearly three decades. The deadliest Chinese commercial flight crash was the 1994 China Northwest Airlines crash, which killed all 160 people on board.
China Eastern is based in Shanghai and is one of China’s top three carriers with over 600 aircraft, including 109 Boeing 737-800s.
The plane, flight number MU5735 from Kunming to Guangzhou, had an accident over the city of Wuzhou before crashing into a mountainside from a height of 29,100 feet on Monday.
Altitude data also shows the aircraft climbing to about 7,500 feet before beginning its final descent, though commentators warn that the numbers could be anomalies.
China’s Ministry of Transportation said China Eastern has suspended operations on all of its 737-800 aircraft, which could further disrupt domestic air travel already cut due to China’s largest Covid-19 outbreak since its initial peak in early 2020.
The Boeing 737-800 has been flying since 1998 and has a well-established safety record. It is an earlier model than the 737 Max, which was shut down around the world for nearly two years after fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019.
In August 2010, a Henan Airlines Embraer ERJ 190-100 crashed into the ground near the runway in the northeastern city of Yichun and burst into flames.
It contained 96 people, 44 of them died. Investigators blamed the pilot for a mistake.
What is the latest evidence in the plane crash in China?
Chinese investigators trying to determine why a passenger plane with 132 people on board crashed this week in a remote forest area are facing difficult conditions.
The search for the black boxes and any survivors – an unlikely possibility at best – was temporarily put on hold Wednesday due to rain on the muddy, charred mountainside.
A China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 was flying at an altitude of 8,800 meters on Monday afternoon when it suddenly dived into a chasm in the mountains outside the southern Chinese city of Wuzhou.
What did the rescuers find?
Rescuers with sniffer dogs and drones found wallets, ID cards and small pieces of aircraft wreckage. Authorities gave no indication that they found survivors, bodies, or the aircraft’s “black box” flight recorders.
Parts of the plane are scattered across a wide area, including the other side of the mountain, state broadcaster CCTV said. The main crash site, now a large desolate pit in a wooded mountainside, about half the size of a football field.
The seekers have to climb steep slopes as they fan out through an area surrounded on three sides by mountains and accessible via a dirt road.
What are the investigators saying?
Investigators declined to discuss possible causes of the plane crash. Zhu Tao, director of the Aviation Security Bureau of China’s Civil Aviation Authority, said the damage to the aircraft was severe, making the investigation “very difficult.”
“We are unable to make a clear assessment of the cause of the accident with currently available information,” Zhu said at a press conference on Tuesday evening, the first since the accident.
Authorities are “conducting an in-depth investigation” of the aircraft’s design and maintenance, air traffic control, weather and other issues, he said.
What about black boxes?
Investigators will make every effort to collect evidence, with particular focus on finding the flight recorder, Tao said.
The recovery of the so-called black boxes is the key to the investigation – they are usually colored orange for greater visibility, but the long-standing name has stuck. One device, called a flight data recorder, collects information about an aircraft’s airspeed, altitude, up or down direction, pilot actions, and the operation of all key systems. A voice recorder in the cockpit records sounds, including conversations and background engine noise during flight.
Even given the extent of the damage to the plane, investigators should have an idea of what happened if the black boxes survived and could be loaded.
What is known about the aircraft?
“The technical condition of the six-and-a-half-year-old aircraft was stable” and met the requirements for the flight, said Sun Shiying, chairman of China Eastern Airlines’ Yunnan branch.
The flight departed from Kunming City in Yunnan Province and headed for Guangzhou in Guangdong Province.
“The Boeing 737-800 has an excellent safety record,” said Hassan Shahidi, president of the Aviation Safety Foundation. It belongs to an earlier generation of the 737 series than the Boeing 737 Max, which was grounded after crashes in 2018 and 2019. The 737-800 does not have the flight control software that has been blamed for the 737 Max crashes.
How did the Chinese government react?
The central government dispatched a team led by Vice Premier Liu He and high-ranking cabinet official Wang Yong to the site to “lead the rescue efforts” and investigate the plane crash.