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Flight Data Recorder Recovered From Flight 5735 Is in ‘Fairly Good Condition’

This recorder stores far more data describing the behavior of the 737-800 jet during the flight than the cockpit voice recorder that was found first.

Crucial clues to what caused the terrifying death dive of China Eastern Airlines Flight 5735, killing all 132 people on board, will be in the airplane’s flight data recorder that has now been recovered. “Parts of the recorder were damaged, but the outside of the storage unit was in fairly good condition,” said Zhu Tau, of the Chinese air safety agency. This recorder stores far more data describing the behavior of the 737-800 jet during the flight than the cockpit voice recorder that was found first. The recorder was buried five feet into the mountainside of the crash site. It was found when searchers picked up signals from an Emergency Location Transmitter designed for that purpose, as was the cockpit voice recorder. Downloading the data from the flight data recorder is underway at a Beijing lab but the data in the cockpit voice recorder is proving harder to access. The storage chip was damaged and has been sent to the manufacturer in the hope that they can repair it and retrieve audio recording of the pilots’ final words and the sound of alarms going off in the cockpit.

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Clive Irving

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