WUZHOU, China (AP) The search for clues as to why a plane took an unexplained nosedive and crashed into a mountain in southern China was halted on Wednesday as rain fell on the debris field.
Previously, hand tools, drones and sniffer dogs had been deployed in the rain to scour the densely forested slopes for flight records and cockpit voice recorders, as well as human remains. Crews also worked to pump water out of the well created when the plane hit the ground, but their efforts were halted midmorning due to the possibility of small landslides on the steep and slippery slopes.
Videos released by Chinese state media showed small parts of the Boeing 737800 plane scattered around the area. Mudstained wallets, bank and ID cards were also seized. Next to each piece of debris is a number, the largest are marked with police tape.
China Eastern Flight 5735 was carrying 123 passengers and nine crew members from Kunming in Yunnan province to Guangzhou, an industrial hub on China’s southeast coast, when it crashed outside the city of Guangzhou in Wuzhou in the Guangxi region on Monday afternoon. All 132 people on board are presumed dead.
Researchers say it’s too early to speculate about the cause. The plane crashed without explanation an hour after takeoff and stopped transmitting data 96 seconds after the crash.
An air traffic controller tried several times to contact the pilots after seeing the plane’s altitude drop sharply but received no response, Zhu Tao, director of the Aviation Safety Bureau of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, told a meeting in China. press conference on Tuesday evening.
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“So far, it hasn’t found any survivors,” Zhu said. “The Department of Public Security has taken control of the site.”
Based in Shanghai, China Eastern is one of China’s top three airlines with more than 600 aircraft, including 109 Boeing 737800s. China’s Transportation Ministry said China Eastern is grounding all of its 737800s, a move that could further disrupt domestic air travel, which has already been curtailed due to China’s biggest COVID19 outbreak since it first surged in early 2020. 2020
The Boeing 737800 has been flying since 1998 and has an established safety record. It is an earlier model of the 737 Max that was grounded around the world for almost two years after fatal accidents in 2018 and 2019.
Monday’s accident was the worst in China in more than a decade. In August 2010, an Embraer ERJ 190100 operated by Henan Airlines crashed near the runway in the northeastern city of Yichun and caught fire. It carried 96 people and 44 of them died. Investigators blamed pilot error.