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Bloomberg
China has retrieved the second black box from a jet that crashed after days of searching, as investigators try to work out what happened to the China Eastern Airlines flight carrying 132 people that plummeted from a cruise altitude. The flight data recorder was found 5 feet (1.5 metres) beneath the soil, state broadcaster CCTV reported. Investigators made the discovery on the east hill side of the crash site in rural southern China near the city of Wuzhou, it added. The official Xinhua News Agency also confirmed the box had been found.
The second black box will be sent to Beijing on a 1 pm flight for analysis, CCTV reported. Investigators found the Boeing Co 737-800 NG’s cockpit voice recorder and hope to use data from the two boxes to understand what went wrong on the flight. A press conference was expected to be held at 5 pm local time on Sunday.
There are concerns about the condition of the black boxes, given the plane appears to have plunged into the ground at high speed. Officials haven’t ruled out the possibility that the
first box, which has already been sent to Beijing for decoding, was badly damaged upon impact.
Flight MU5735 from Kunming was cruising at about 29,000 feet and some 100 miles from its destination in Guangzhou, southern China, when it suddenly went into a steep descent.
Over the next 1 minute and 35 seconds the plane lost altitude in a near vertical dive, which took it almost to the speed of sound. The plane briefly halted its descent for some 10 seconds, and even climbed a little, before plummeting again and slamming into a hillside. All 132 people on board, including nine crew members, were killed.
China said it hadn’t found any evidence of explosive materials in the wreckage of the plane. Some 24,000 pieces of wreckage have been retrieved, officials said, and remains of 120 people had been identified.
No trace of explosives found in jet crash samples: China
Bloomberg
China said it hasn’t found any evidence of explosive materials in the wreckage of a China Eastern Airlines flight that crashed with 132 people on board.
“Lab tests taken of 66 samples, 41 of which have been completed, showed no major common inorganic explosive or common organic explosive substances have been found,†fire official Zheng Xi said at a briefing in the southern city of Wuzhou.
Zhu Tao, an official with the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), added that investigators found a transmitter installed close to a missing black box that records flight data, but haven’t retrieved the device itself. A black box that captures voices in the cockpit was found earlier. Some 24,000 pieces of wreckage have been retrieved, officials said, and remains of 120 people have been identified.