One of the China Eastern ‘black boxes’ recovered as rain blankets crash site

The black box is “seriously damaged,” said Mao Yanfeng, director of the accident investigation department of the Civil Aviation Administration of China’s Aviation Safety Office, at a news conference Wednesday evening.

“Right now the search team is organizing technical forces to search for the other recording device,” Mao said.

State broadcaster CCTV said the device was preliminarily identified as the cockpit voice recorder, and has been sent to Beijing for repair and decoding. Each plane also has a second black box, a flight data recorder.

No survivors found after Chinese plane crash as authorities scour steep mountaintop site

CCTV footage showed emergency responders placing the recorder — actually an orange-colored canister — into a clear plastic bag at the crash site.

“Keep trying,” a man is heard saying in the footage. “Help search, keep searching.”

Authorities have held off on confirming casualties as they continued the search for survivors. On Wednesday night, they said fragments of human tissue were found amid the wreckage.

A local media report said those on the plane included a young couple with their one and a half-year-old daughter, whom they were taking for a surgery to fix a fistula. “The child’s illness had always pained her heart, and this time she was going to Guangzhou to completely cure the child,” said the woman’s brother, according to a report by a China Youth Daily reporter.

Other passengers including executives from a Guangzhou mining company; a 22-year old woman who married five months ago; and a 36-year-old woman returning to Guangzhou after going home for Lunar New Year, according to local reports.

Mao said that ground-air communications with the flight had been normal from its takeoff in Kunming until it began its sudden descent over Guangxi. There had been no alarms from the pilots, nor warnings of dangerous weather, he said.

The state-run Jinan Times published an audio recording on Wednesday of ground controllers and pilots of other flights calling to MU5735, with no reply.

China Eastern Yunnan Airlines chairman Sun Shiying said at the news conference that the aircraft has been in use since June 2015, and met maintenance standards. He said the captain and two co-pilots were in good health. The captain was hired in January 2018 and had 6,709 total flight hours, the first co-pilot had 31,769 flight hours, and the second co-pilot had 556 flight hours, he said.

“From what we have learned so far, these pilots’ performance had been good overall and their family situations were pretty harmonious,” Sun said.

The plane crash has dominated social media in China over the past two days. On Wednesday evening, nine of the top 20 searches on the Weibo social media platform were about the recovery of the black box, the search for survivors and other news related to the tragedy.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said in a statement that he was “shocked” to learn of the incident, according to CCTV, and ordered a full emergency response and investigation. Authorities have held off on confirming casualties as 2,000 emergency responders continued their search.

The crash likely is the deadliest since 1994, when a China Northwest Airlines flight crashed in Xian, killing 160 people after the plane broke up in the air due to an autopilot malfunction.

Heavy rain on Wednesday impeded the search. CCTV reported that a landslide had partially blocked the entrance to the crash site, while rescue workers continued to scour a broad area where debris was scattered. The mud was making it almost impossible to operate large machinery, with the search continuing on foot and by drone, CCTV said.

IDs and other personal effects had been carefully collected and kept in tents near the crash site, the broadcaster added.

Footage of the crash recorded at a local mining company on Monday showed the plane plummeting at nearly a vertical angle out of the sky.

The CAAC on Tuesday ordered industry-wide safety checks for the next two weeks. China Eastern, one of the country’s four largest state-owned airlines, has grounded all of its Boeing 737-800 planes as it fully investigates the crash, according to CCTV.

The official China News Service said a final investigation report could take months or even years.

Li reported from Seoul, Chiang from Taipei, Taiwan. Lily Kuo in Taipei, Taiwan contributed to this report.