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China finds second black box from crash buried 5 feet in the ground

FILE PHOTO: Rescue workers walk at the site where a China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 plane flying from Kunming to Guangzhou crashed, in Wuzhou, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China March 24, 2022. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins/File Photo

Search and recovery crews found the second black box recording device from the China Eastern plane that crashed in the Guangxi province, killing all 132 passengers on board.

The black box – which is actually a bright orange cylinder – was found in a 5-foot (1.5 meters) deep hole in the ground. In a video from CGTN, the international arm of CCTV, the device looked dented and muddied but still intact.

S&R teams have been out searching for days now, and the US is in the process of joining the effort, but that’s been stalled by the quarantine rules in China. The hope is that the two black boxes will help investigators figure out why the crash happened.

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“We found it today, under the root of this tree when we dug down 1.5 meters,” said Chen Xiaohui, the deputy chief of Nanning Detachment of the Guangxi Fire and Rescue Corps. “When it appeared, it looked round. A civil aviation engineer came over, confirmed it immediately and took it away.”

Liu Xiaodong, a spokesman for China Eastern, said at the Sunday briefing that the airline had started discussing compensation with relatives of the crash victims “and will fully respect the reasonable demands of the family in accordance with relevant laws and regulations of the state.”