BEIJING – Paramedics have found a black box and human corpses at the China Eastern Airlines crash site, state media said, quoting Chinese officials on Wednesday.
The black plane boxes are two sets of technological devices – one that records flight data, and the other that records cockpit connections with aircraft traffic controls. Analyzing that data can reveal the reasons for the crash.
The black box found on Wednesday may have been a cockpit, and yet another, Zhu Tao, director of aviation safety office at the Civil Aviation Administration of China, said at a press conference on Wednesday night.
The box was taken overnight to a trained airport in Beijing for data analysis, Zhu said, noting that the process would take time. The last unit of the box looks perfect, even though the exterior is badly damaged.
A Boeing 737-800 plane carrying 132 people died on Monday afternoon in a rural, mountainous region in the southern province of Guangxi. Authorities have not yet confirmed any deaths or shared the cause of the accident.
Honeywell produced two black boxes on a Boeing plane that crashed, according to a Chinese airline news report, quoting a press conference on Wednesday.
Rescue teams sent the bodies of the victims to the scene of the accident, added state media, citing a similar media event.
The last major passenger plane crash in China occurred in 2010.
As this week’s accident involved a Boeing flight made in the United States, American organizations and companies will take part in the investigation.
While Chinese authorities were leading the investigation, the US National Transportation Safety Board said it had appointed a senior air safety inspector and that representatives of the Federal Aviation Administration, Boeing and CFM would be the technical advisors. CFM is a joint venture between United States-based General Electric and France-based Safran who built engines on the wreckage, the safety board said.