Second black box of crashed China Eastern plane recovered: state media

The second black box has been recovered from a crashed China Eastern passenger plane, state media reported Sunday.

The jet was flying between the cities of Kunming and Guangzhou on Monday when it nosedived into a mountainside with 132 people on board, all of whom were killed.

The cause of the disaster is not yet known.

"The second black box from China Eastern flight MU5735 was recovered on March 27," Xinhua news agency reported.

The plane was equipped with two flight recorders: one in the rear passenger cabin tracking flight data, and the other a cockpit voice recorder.

The latter was found on Wednesday and sent to Beijing for analysis, which is expected to take several more days.

The second black box contains data such as speed, altitude and heading.

With both now recovered, investigators should be able to begin to piece together what caused the plane to fall more than 6,000 metres (20,000 feet) in just over a minute.

Hundreds of people, including firefighters, doctors and investigators, remain at the scene of the tragedy recovering human remains and the wreckage of the plane.

The Chinese Civil Aviation Administration (CAAC) said on Saturday evening that all of the people on board the aircraft had died, and that it had confirmed almost all of their identities through DNA testing.

All 123 passengers and nine crew members were Chinese nationals.

The cause has mystified aviation authorities, who have scoured the site's rugged terrain for clues as to what sparked China's deadliest plane crash in nearly 30 years.

China Eastern had earlier said the crashed plane, which was nearly seven years old, had met all airworthiness requirements pre-flight.

Following the incident, the company launched a safety overhaul, grounding all 223 of its Boeing 737-800 aeroplanes for checks.

The disaster provoked an unusually swift public response from President Xi Jinping, who ordered a probe into its cause as aviation authorities vowed an extensive two-week check-up of China's vast passenger fleet.

The safety message has rippled out across sectors.

A notice from the State Council and Ministry of Emergency Management on Wednesday called for industries across the board to "rectify potential safety hazards".

The crash affects the return for Boeing's 737 MAX in China, the last big market where the US planemaker is still awaiting approval to resume flying following crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed a combined 346 people in 2018 and 2019.

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Recovery of crashed China Eastern jet hampered by heavy rain
Wuzhou, China (AFP) March 23, 2022
Heavy rains on Wednesday hampered the recovery of a China Eastern jet that nosedived into a mountain with 132 passengers onboard, a disaster that has mystified crash investigators who are yet to locate the black boxes. Three days on from Monday's crash and there are no signs of survivors, yet officials have refrained from declaring all of the passengers dead, in what is almost certain to be China's deadliest plane crash in nearly 30 years. Hundreds of firefighters, officials and volunteers have ... read more