Civil aviation authorities announced on Wednesday the discovery of a Boeing 737-800 black box that crashed in China on Monday with 132 people on board, for reasons still unknown.
The China Eastern Airlines plane disintegrated on Monday on a forested slope of Wuzhou (south), while flying from Kunming (southwest) to Guangzhou (south).
So far no survivors of flight MU5735 have been found and there is little hope because the plane crashed almost vertically and then caught fire.
A black box “from China Eastern [flight] MU5735 was found on March 23,” Liu Lusong, a spokesman for the Chinese Civil Aviation Administration (CAAC), told the press.
A passenger plane has two flight recorders, also called black boxes, one that records conversations in the cockpit and the other with key information such as speed, altitude and heading of the aircraft.
The Autonomous Community did not specify which of the two black boxes had been found and only said that it was “badly damaged”.
Hundreds of firefighters, military, doctors and volunteers are still mobilized to find traces of passengers and their personal effects, as well as the second black box.
- “Kerosene smell” -
AFP journalists saw a small group of people, accompanied by local officials, crossing a roadblock a few kilometers from the scene of the accident, where heavy rain fell on Wednesday.
One man told reporters that he was related to a victim, and asked the media not to crowd around him.
The search was suspended on Wednesday due to heavy rains, which left the place full of mud and difficult for rescuers to access.
“Small landslides may occur,” said a reporter for state-owned CCTV, who said he could still smell “kerosene” on the spot, two days after the disaster.
“There is a huge hole where the plane crashed. The water has accumulated there (...) and drainage works will surely be necessary”, he explained.
CCTV broadcasted images of the plane's white wreckage, scattered across the dark brown earth, as well as wallets, identity cards, clothing or cameras.
The possible confirmation of the deaths of all 123 passengers and nine crew members would make it the worst plane crash since 1994 in China, where air safety is considered very good by experts.
According to the CAAC, all persons on board were of Chinese nationality.
- Dive -
The reasons for the accident are unknown at the moment. According to data from the specialized website Flightradar, the plane tilted sharply to the ground before crashing, an unusual behavior, according to experts.
“When the air traffic controller noticed the sharp drop in height of the plane, he immediately contacted the crew, several times, but got no response,” Zhu Tao, director of air safety of the CAAC, said on Tuesday.
According to China Eastern, the aircraft met all the technical requirements. However, the Autonomous Community ordered a general inspection of the entire aviation sector over the next two weeks.
Chinese President Xi Jinping called on Monday that “the causes of the accident be determined as soon as possible” and sent a government team headed by Deputy Prime Minister Liu He to the scene.
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