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25-03-2022
BEIJING/ WASHINGTON: Chinese emergency workers found on Wednesday one of two black boxes from a China Eastern Airlines (600115.SS) plane that crashed this week with 132 people onboard, and the United States said its investigators had been invited to the crash site.
The black box device recovered is the plane’s cockpit voice recorder, based on an early assessment, a Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) official told a media briefing, adding that the recording material appeared to have survived impact in relatively good shape.
Flight MU5735 was en route from the southwestern city of Kunming to Guangzhou on the coast on Monday when the Boeing 737-800 jet suddenly plunged from cruising altitude at about the time when it should have started its descent before landing.
The cause of the crash has yet to be determined. Most of the jet appears to have disintegrated upon impact, although some debris and human remains have been found.
“An initial inspection showed that the exterior of the recorder has been severely damaged, but the storage units, while also damaged to some extent, are relatively complete,” CAAC official Zhu Tao said.
The black box is being sent to an institute in Beijing for decoding, although how long that takes would depend on the extent of the damage, Zhu said.
Weather along the flight path on Monday did not pose any danger to the aircraft and air controllers had communication with it after take-off and prior to its rapid descent, said Mao Yanfeng, head of aircraft investigation at CAAC.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Wednesday that Chinese authorities had invited the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board to take part in the investigation of the crash, adding that he was very encouraged by the invitation to be on the ground in China.
The Chinese authorities have said the plane, which did not respond to repeated calls during its descent, met airworthiness standards before take-off and all three pilots – one more than normally required on a 737 – were in good health.
The captain, hired in January 2018, had 6,709 hours flying experience, while the first and second officers had 31,769 hours and 556 hours, respectively, a China Eastern official said.
“From what we know, the performance of the three pilots had been good and their family life relatively harmonious,” the official said. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
