WUZHOU: A black box from the crashed China Eastern airliner was recovered on Wednesday as investigators try to determine what made the jet carrying 132 passengers nosedive into a mountainside in southern China. The cause of the disaster has mystified aviation authorities who have scoured rugged terrain for clues, finding no survivors from what is almost certain to be China’s deadliest plane crash in nearly 30 years.
Aviation officials confirmed they had found a black box they believed to be the cockpit voice recorder, which should provide important clues to the cause of the crash. Zhu Tao, an official at China’s aviation authority, told reporters that the exterior was “severely damaged and the storage unit was also damaged to a certain extent, but it was relatively complete”.
The stricken jet, a Boeing 737-800, was equipped with two recorders: One in the rear passenger cabin tracking flight data, and the other a cockpit voice recorder. Rescuers are still looking for the other recorder.
Officials have not declared all of the passengers dead despite the pulverised mass of twisted metal and charred belongings that recovery teams found at the crash site.
Zheng Xi, head of the area’s rescue service, said on Wednesday evening that some human remains had been found.
Earlier in the day reporters saw a small crowd of people guided by officials across the police cordon that marks entry to the site, huddled under umbrellas in the driving rain.
One middle-aged man later confirmed that he was the relative of someone on the flight, and asked the media not to crowd around him.
Rescue work is ongoing across the huge 45,200 square metre crash zone. Orange-clad rescuers have been using dogs, drones and scanners to scour the debris scattered across the mountainside. – AFP