The second black box has been recovered from last week’s deadly China Eastern plane crash, officials have said, and could help solve the mystery of the jet’s breakneck descent.
The second black box has been recovered from last week’s deadly China Eastern plane crash, officials said on Sunday, and could help solve the mystery of the jet’s breakneck descent. The Boeing 737-800 was flying between the cities of Kunming and Guangzhou on Monday when it nosedived into a mountainside, disintegrating on impact and killing all 132 people on board. The cause of the disaster, China’s deadliest plane crash in more than 30 years, is not yet known. An « orange cylindrical object was unearthed » Sunday morning, Zhu Tao, director of safety at China’s Civil Aviation Administration (CAAC), told reporters. « Investigators on site have confirmed… it is the storage unit of the flight data recorder. » The plane was equipped with two flight recorders: a cockpit voice recorder and one in the rear passenger cabin tracking flight data. The former was found on Wednesday and sent to Beijing for analysis, which is expected to take several more days. This second black box contains crucial information such as the speed of the aircraft, its altitude and heading. READ| All 132 on crashed China Eastern plane confirmed dead « While other parts of the recorder were seriously damaged, the data storage unit appears relatively intact » and « has been sent to a professional lab to be decoded », Zhu said.
