Facebook Twitter
Friday, June 2, 2023 | 
U.S. & World

One of the black boxes from the doomed China Eastern plane has been found

What to know about the China Eastern plane that crashed after a serious nosedive

By Herb Scribner Herb Scribnerhscribner@deseretnews.com
SHARE One of the black boxes from the doomed China Eastern plane has been found
An emergency worker holding an orange-colored “black box” recorder.

In this image taken from video footage run by China’s CCTV, an emergency worker holding an orange-colored “black box” recorder found at the China Eastern flight crash site Wednesday, March 23, 2022, in Tengxian County in southern China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

Associated Press

One black box from the doomed China Eastern plane has been found in China.

Why it matters: Officials are still trying to determine the cause of the China airplane crash. The black box could be the first step in discovering what happened.

  • Black boxes are equipment that can reveal the causes of airplane crashes.
Related

Catch up quick: A China Eastern Boeing 737 airplane flight crashed earlier this week, and no one knows why.

  • At least 130 people were on board the plane when it crashed in southern China, as I wrote for the Deseret News.
  • The plane took a serious nosedive, which was captured on video.
  • The flight reportedly reached 29,100 feet before it had a massive descent, falling 25,000 feet in two minutes, per CNBC.

The latest: One of the two black boxes with data of the recent airline crash was found Wednesday, per Chinese state media.

  • The box was found “heavily damaged” and it was not clear whether it was the black box that recorded the flight data or cockpit communications, per CNBC.
  • Mao Yanfeng, the director of the accident investigation division of the Civil Aviation Authority of China, said search teams are still looking for the other black box, according to The Associated Press.

The bigger picture: Search teams did not find any survivors of the crash Tuesday, according to CNBC.

  • Rescue teams “used hand tools, drones and sniffer dogs under rainy conditions to comb the heavily forested slopes for the flight data and cockpit voice recorders,” according to The Associated Press.