One of two recording equipment (black box recorders) was found amidst the wreckage of a China Eastern Airlines flight, giving investigators hope it’ll shed light on why the passenger jet plummeted down to a mountainside in southern China, authorities said on Wednesday. There was no survivor among the 123 passengers on board the aircraft Flight 5735 survived when it crashed within the Guangxi region. a politician from the Civil Aviation Administration of China confirmed Wednesday that one in all the recording devices was located. According to the officials, the external protective covering was damaged extensively.
The Chinese authorities have revealed that the recovered device may be the cockpit voice recorder during the group meeting on Wednesday. It was found within the main impact point of the crash and has been sent to Beijing for repair and analysis, officials said. In addition, authorities publicly acknowledged that human remains were found at the crash site for the first time.
The crash site is being ransacked with hope of finding the second black box recorder which holds the flight data, wing flap positions, and the air speed. From the available data, it was discovered that Boeing 737-800 plunged from 29,000 feet to eight 000 feet, leveled off, and went into a freefall, exploding into a fireball as filmed by the witness nearby.
“What that cockpit voice recorder tells us is what the pilots are saying to one another. What were they doing? it’ll mean the difference between having the ability to mention that they had a significant emergency they were fighting down, or even there was just one person within the cockpit. But, John Nance, a former commercial pilot, said to ABC News contributor, “we can’t say what happened.”
The plane crashed after starting from Kunming, the capital of China’s province. Chinese officials said the flight was headed to Guangzhou, a port city northwest of the city. Air traffic controllers tried severally to communicate with the flight crew over the radio after they noticed the aircraft’s rapid descent but could not revive communications with the team before the crash, Chinese officials said. U.S. intelligence doesn’t have a transparent reason as of what caused the plane crash.
“We are not going to rule out an intentional downing of the aircraft,” a source tells ABC News. “Having an airliner impact the bottom as fast as this is often going, almost to the speed of sound, implies that it’s visiting pulverize the airplane and everything in it,” Nance said. “However, the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder are within the tail of the airplane, which slows down considerably by the time they reach the bottom. Consequently, although the box is mangled, the chip inside it can withstand almost 100 G’s, so that should be OK.” Taking further precautionary measures, the eastern Chinese airline has halted its fleet of Boeing 737-800s scheduled on Wednesday. The United National Safety Transportation Board, the Federal Aviation Administration, Boeing, and Engine-maker CFM International have all joined to investigate the situation.