Zhu Tao, director of the Bureau of Aviation Safety at China’s Civil Aviation Administration, speaks during a news conference at a hotel in Wuzhou, March 23, 2022.
Noël Celis | AFP | Getty Images
BEIJING — Search and rescue teams have found a black box and human remains at the China Eastern Airlines crash site, state media said late Wednesday, citing Chinese officials.
An aircraft’s flight recorders are two sets of technical equipment – one that captures flight data and another that records cockpit communications with air traffic controllers. Analysis of this data could reveal reasons for the crash.
The black box found Wednesday is likely the cockpit voice recorder while the search for the other continues, Zhu Tao, director of the Bureau of Aviation Safety at the Civil Aviation Administration of China, said at a news conference Wednesday night.
The box was shipped overnight to a professional civil aviation authority in Beijing for data analysis, Zhu said, noting that the process would take time. The box’s storage unit appears to be relatively complete, although the exterior was badly damaged.
A Boeing 737-800 plane carrying 132 people went into a nosedive in a rural, mountainous part of Guangxi’s southern region Monday afternoon. Authorities have not confirmed any deaths or disclosed why the crash happened.
Honeywell manufactured the two flight recorders on the crashed Boeing plane, the China Civil Aviation Administration news report said, citing Wednesday’s news conference.
Rescue teams have sent human remains found at the crash site to investigators, state media added, citing the same press event.
The last serious passenger plane crash in China was in 2010.
Because this week’s crash involved an American-made Boeing plane, US agencies and companies will also join the investigation.
While Chinese authorities lead the investigation, the US National Transportation Safety Board said it had appointed a senior aviation safety investigator and that representatives from the Federal Aviation Administration, Boeing and CFM will serve as technical advisers. CFM is a joint venture between US-based General Electric and France-based Safran, which manufactured the engines for the crashed plane, the safety agency said.