The head of the safety office of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), Zhu Tao, has announced that Beijing has completed the main search and rescue operations at the crash site of the China Eastern Airlines B-737/800, which crashed in the Guanxi Mountains on March 21, killing all 132 people on board.

CAAC investigators are working to decode data from both black boxes: the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) that records cockpit audio conversations, the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) that stores aircraft parameters in flight. To date, Chinese authorities have preliminarily analyzed the presumed trajectory, position, impact force of the aircraft, data from radar systems.

CAAC reported that the preliminary accident report will be completed and made public after the conclusion of the investigation. In any case, it is expected within 30 days from the day of the tragedy. This is established by international standards, according to which the document must be submitted within the deadlines in private form to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) of the United Nations. The final report is due within one year of the accident.

On the same subject see also the articles published by AVIONEWS 1 and 2.