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

SHANGHAI - A “black box,” or recorder, was recovered from the wreckage of a China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 jet that crashed into a mountain, possibly offering clues to the cause of the country’s deadliest plane crash in nearly three decades.

Two days after the tragedy, search teams have not found survivors from the flight carrying 132 people, and state media called the chance of anyone surviving “extremely small.” Authorities said Wednesday evening that they had retrieved one of the plane’s two black boxes, which contain recorded information from the flight.

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

“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. The plane also had a flight data recorder.

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. “Help search, keep searching.”

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Wednesday that Chinese civil aviation authorities invited experts from the National Transportation Safety Board to be “on the ground” in China, adding that his department will support the work. The NTSB said the agency is in contact with China’s chief investigator and will provide assistance “in all ways necessary.”

Chinese authorities have held off on confirming casualties as they continue the search for survivors. On Wednesday night, they said fragments of human tissue had been found amid the wreckage.

A local media report said those on the plane included a young couple with their 1-year-old daughter, whom they were taking for surgery to fix a fistula. “The child’s illness had always pained her [mother’s] heart, and this time she was going to Guangzhou to completely cure the child,” said the woman’s brother, according to a China Youth Daily report.

Other passengers included executives from a Guangzhou mining company, a 22-year old woman who had 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 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 Wednesday of ground controllers and the pilots of other flights calling to the plane, with no reply.

Sun Shiying, chairman of China Eastern Yunnan Airlines, a subsidiary, said at the news conference that the aircraft had 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 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 for 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 crash, according to CCTV, and ordered a full emergency response and investigation.

The crash appears to be the country’s deadliest since 1994, when a China Northwest Airlines flight crashed in Xian, killing 160 people. The plane had broken up in the air because of an autopilot malfunction.

Heavy rain impeded the search Wednesday. CCTV reported that a landslide had partly blocked the entrance to the crash site, while rescue workers continued to scour a broad area where debris was scattered. 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 were carefully collected and kept in tents near the crash site, the broadcaster added.

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

The Civil Aviation Administration 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.

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Li reported from Seoul, Chiang from Taipei, Taiwan. The Washington Post’s Lily Kuo in Taipei, and Michael Laris and Ian Duncan in Washington, contributed to this report.