China finds black box two days after Eastern plane crash

Addis Ababa, March 23, 2022 (FBC) – One of the two “black box” recorders from the crashed China Eastern flight has been found in severely damaged condition, two days after the accident that presumably killed all 132 people on board.

The device is so damaged that investigators were not able to tell whether it is the flight data recorder or the cockpit voice recorder, said Mao Yanfeng, the director of the accident investigation division of the Civil Aviation Authority of China (CAAC), on Wednesday.

The flight data recorder captures information about the plane’s airspeed, altitude, direction up or down, pilot actions, and performance of all key systems.

The cockpit voice recorder, on the other hand, captures sounds including conversations and background engine noise during the flight.

Yanfeng told a news conference that an all-out effort is being made to find the other black box. It wasn’t clear if the damage to the recovered one would limit its usefulness.

Investigators say it is too early to speculate on the cause. The plane went into an unexplained dive an hour after departure and stopped transmitting data 96 seconds into the fall.

Source: TRT