5 days after plane crash, 2nd black box eludes China searchers

Well, the top photo shows not simply 'a piece of debris' but the letter 東 which poignantly signifies 'East' for China Eastern.

Best and most informative article that I have seen so far as to what is going on. Such a sad event, which I hope through the efforts of the investigators will never be repeated. The second 'black' box has to be somewhere...

I hope they can get some information from the first black (or orange?) box. May the dead rest in peace.

May they ‘Rest In Peace’ and the families of those lost find some bit of solace from a thorough and transparent investigation being pursued.

From the first AP report when the first box was found Mar 23 (GMT):

- “The recorder will be sent to Beijing for decoding and analysis, Zhu said. How long that will take depends on the degree of damage the unit suffered, he said.

“Investigators will next “continue to go all-out to find the flight data recorder to provide even more comprehensive data support to reconstruct the entire incident," he said.

“Images released earlier by state broadcaster CCTV showed workers placing a bright orange, mud-caked cylinder into a labeled, clear plastic, zip-close bag.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-23/terrain-rain-hampering-search-at-site-of-china-plane-crash

They were searching for a box containing the flight data recorder

Had to parse the article to understand which recorder was found: apparently, it was the voice recorder.

That plane went straight down into the ground at speed. Maybe even the black boxes did not survive that.

They will find it eventually. That is one of its only functions. To survive a disaster. It my be damaged with the speed of impact, but it will be found.

NotSo HungOverMar. 25  10:33 pm JST

The plot thickens day by day. Debris found over an extended area suggests a mid-air breakup- but was that due to a Bomb, a Missile, or simply due to the Plane dive bombing ?

One piece was found in one location, not “over an extended area.”

It was a lightweight part that may be a control surface.

It suggests the piece was stressed beyond limits as the plane exceeded a critical velocity.

What an absolute nonsense. If finding all those boxes and the recorded data would have had any use so far, we wouldn’t still read about all those tragic plane crashes anymore. But we still do, so it obviously doesn’t play any role if there are such boxes installed or if they are found or not.

Wrong. You should read NTSB accident reports. Cockpit and data recorders are invaluable.

is it possible to put a GPS tracker in those black boxes? Too easy? I dunno

What an absolute nonsense. If finding all those boxes and the recorded data would have had any use so far, we wouldn’t still read about all those tragic plane crashes anymore. But we still do, so it obviously doesn’t play any role if there are such boxes installed or if they are found or not.

Compared to the 1950s and even 1960s air travel is vastly safer today and you can directly attribute that to detailed mishap investigations. The lessons from those mishap investigations inform the many safety procedures pilots use every day. They also inform bodies of aviation law and regulations. We used to say in Naval Aviation that the rules are written in blood and it is true. However in aviation like anything else the human is the weak link. Humans are fallible creatures. But having those procedures drilled into you during sweaty simulator session or equally sweaty check rides with evaluators makes burns those procedures into pilots brains and for the most part they become habits, good habits that are followed and prevent mishaps. And most of those procedures come from lessons learned from someone else's mishap.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said talks were ongoing with China over dispatching an expert to participate in the investigation, as is standard when the planes involved are from American manufacturers.

Yes but not quite. Under ICAO regulations the nation that manufactured the aircraft is supposed to be the nation to appoint the leader of the mishap investigation who in turn has the authority to chose the other members of the investigation team. The Chinese are being difficult about letting someone from the NTSB enter China without going through a lengthy quarantine. Meanwhile there is growing frustration and a fear the Chinese have already begun extracting data from the voice recorder with a US investigation team present.

is it possible to put a GPS tracker in those black boxes? Too easy? I dunno

They know where the wreckage is. The aircraft has what are called an ELT for Emergency Locator Transmitter, sometimes more than one, that transmits a signal on a very specific emergency frequency that satellites can detect and geolocate. Putting an ELT on a black box is considered redundant.

That plane went straight down into the ground at speed. Maybe even the black boxes did not survive that.

Maybe, it hasn’t been the first time that in a plane crash like this where the black boxes weren’t found. Although seldom it can happen, but yes, the plane was falling at a very high speed. I’m thinking that the wings were probably ripped off at that point to reach that high speed.

about 29,100 feet (8,870 meters) at about 523 mph (840 km/h) when it started to fall, what was reported.

The China Eastern Airlines Corp. jet that crashed Monday was traveling at close to the speed of sound in the moments before it slammed into a hillside, according to a Bloomberg News review of flight-track data.

Such an impact may complicate the task for investigators because it can obliterate evidence and, in rare cases, damage a plane’s data and voice recorders that are designed to withstand most crashes.

The Boeing Co. 737-800 was knifing through the air at more than 640 miles (966 kilometers) per hour, and at times may have exceeded 700 mph, according to data from Flightradar24, a website that tracks planes.

“The preliminary data indicate it was near the speed of sound,” said John Hansman, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology astronautics and aeronautics professor who reviewed Bloomberg’s calculation of the jet’s speed. “It was coming down steep.”

Sound travels at 761 mph at sea level but slows with altitude as air temperature goes down and is about 663 mph at 35,000 feet (10,668 meters).

https://time.com/6159758/china-eastern-crash-dive/