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China mourns death of 132 in jet crash, second black box found
A memorial event was held on Sunday at the site in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region where the Boeing 737-800 aircraft crashed after rapidly falling from cruising altitude on March 21.
China on Sunday mourned the victims of the China Eastern Airlines jetliner crash, hours after the country’s civil aviation authorities officially confirmed the deaths of the 132 people including nine crew members on board the aircraft.
A memorial event was held on Sunday at the site in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region where the Boeing 737-800 aircraft crashed after rapidly falling from cruising altitude last Monday.
The aircraft was enroute from the southwestern city of Kunming to Guangzhou in southern China.
At about 2 pm local time on Sunday, sirens were sounded throughout a mountainous area in Tengxian county in Guangxi and staff members at the accident’s national emergency response headquarters and rescuers at the site stood solemnly in silence for three minutes in a tribute to the victims, state media reported
Recovery workers, meanwhile, have found the second black box - the flight data recorder - from the aircraft wreckage. “The second black box from China Eastern flight MU5735 was recovered on March 27,” the official Xinhua News Agency reported on Sunday.
The other black box - the cockpit voice recorder - was found on Wednesday, and was sent to Beijing for examination by experts.
The second black box was found buried in mud on a slope at the crash site at about 9am on Sunday.
The search for the equipment had been hampered by continuous rain last week, and the remoteness of the crash site.
The two recorders should help investigators determine the cause of the crash, especially why the aircraft plummeted from 29,000 feet, and plunged into a forested mountainside in Guangxi.
Video posted by CGTN, the international arm of CCTV, showed an official holding the orange can-like object on site with the words “RECORDER” and “DO NOT OPEN” written on it.
In a late development on Saturday, the Civil Aviation of China of China (CAAC) had confirmed the deaths of all 132 passengers and crew on the plane.
Speaking to reporters on Saturday night, Hu Zhenjiang, CAAC deputy director confirmed that there were no signs of life from the crash site and that all 123 passengers and 9 crew members had been killed, state media said.
The search team had earlier said it had identified DNA from 120 of the people on board.
“It is with great sadness that we here announce that the 123 passengers and nine crew members on board China Eastern Airlines Flight MU5735 on March 21 have all died,” Hu said at a late night press conference.
“In the next step, more efforts will be made to search for the remains of the victims and the wreckage of the plane to provide strong support for the following investigation and evidence collection, Hu, according to a Xinhua report.
Hundreds of rescue workers had joined the search and rescue efforts. Drones and other equipment were also used in the operation, the report said.
China’s cyberspace watchdog, according to Reuters, has ordered internet platforms and websites to clamp down on netizens spreading rumours and conspiracy theories, and any online mockery of the disaster.
Since the crash, the report said authorities have banned users and closed accounts to deal with more than 167,000 rumours, ranging from the deaths of seven directors of a company to divine prophecies of a plane crash by the end of March.
The crash was the deadliest air disaster in mainland China since 1994, when a China Northwest Airlines flight from Xian to Guangzhou crashed, killing all 160 people on board.
