The search for the black boxes and any
survivors — a remote possibility at best — was temporarily suspended Wednesday
due to rain on the muddy, charred mountainside.
The China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800
was flying at 29,000 feet (8,800 meters) on Monday afternoon when it suddenly
nosedived into a gap in the mountains outside the southern Chinese city of
Wuzhou.
WHAT HAVE RESCUERS FOUND?
Rescuers with sniffer dogs and drones have
found wallets, identity cards and small parts of plane debris. Authorities have
given no indication they found survivors, bodies or the plane’s “black box”
flight recorders.
Parts of the plane are scattered over a
wide area, including the other side of the mountain, state broadcaster CCTV
said. The main crash area, now a large barren pit in the forested mountainside,
is about half the size of a football field.
Searchers must climb steep inclines as they
fan out in the area, which is surrounded on three sides by mountains and
accessible by a dirt road.
WHAT ARE INVESTIGATORS SAYING?
Investigators have declined to discuss
possible reasons for the crash. Zhu Tao, director of the Office of Aviation
Safety of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, said damage to the
aircraft was severe, which makes the investigation “very difficult.”
“We cannot have a clear assessment of the
cause of the accident with the information currently available,” Zhu said at a
Tuesday night news conference, the first since the crash..
Authorities are “carrying out in-depth
investigation” of the aircraft’s design and maintenance, air traffic control,
weather and other issues, he said.
WHAT ABOUT THE BLACK BOXES?
Investigators will make an all-out effort
to collect evidence, with a focus on finding the flight recorder, Tao said.
Recovering the so-called black boxes is key
to the investigation – they are usually painted orange for visibility, but the
longtime name has stuck.
One device, called 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 captures sounds including conversations and background engine
noise during the flight.
Even with the extent of the damage to the
plane, investigators should be able to get a good idea of what happened if the
black boxes survived and can be downloaded.
WHAT IS KNOWN ABOUT THE PLANE?
The 6 1/2-year-old plane’s “technical
condition was stable” and met requirements to fly, said Sun Shiying, the the
chairman of the Yunnan provincial branch of China Eastern Airlines.
The flight had departed the city of Kunming
in Yunnan and was headed to Guangzhou in Guangdong province.
The 737-800 has an excellent safety record,
said Hassan Shahidi, president of the Flight Safety Foundation. It is from an
earlier generation of the 737 series than the Boeing 737 Max jets, which were
grounded after crashes in 2018 and 2019. The 737-800 does not have the flight
control software that was blamed for the 737 Max crashes.
HOW HAS THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT RESPONDED?
The central government has sent a team led
by Vice Premier Liu He and a senior Cabinet official, State Councilor Wang
Yong, to the site to “guide rescue work” and the investigation of the crash. -AP
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