How will the black box of the plane that crashed in China be handled?

According to CNA, an official from China’s aviation regulator said the black box found was severely damaged. Officials said they could not determine whether the black box was the flight data recorder (FDR) or the cockpit voice recorder (CVR).

The official revealed that both the black boxes of this plane were manufactured by American technology corporation Honeywell. However, he did not specify the specific model.

Despite the serious damage, the black box is still a source of clues as to why the China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 plane plunged from the sky so quickly and crashed into the mountainside in a near-vertical direction. so.

Usually, once the black boxes are found, technicians will peel off the protective material and carefully clean the connections to make sure they don’t accidentally delete data. They will then load and copy those audio or data files. The data is then decoded and converted into a graph.

Sometimes, investigators will use the method of “spectral analysis”. This is a very commonly used acoustic analysis that helps to recognize the barely audible alarms or the first transient burst of an explosion.

Depending on the type of black box, the amount of data collected will vary. In the case of the China Eastern Airlines plane, it is unclear how much data the black box manufactured by Honeywell was capable of recording.

Many hoped the black box could collect enough data during the 66-minute China Eastern Airlines flight.

Video: Rescuers find the black box of the China Eastern Airlines plane at the scene (Source: CGTN):

According to aviation experts, black box data is a valuable source of information for understanding the cause of the plane crash, but the process of deciphering them can take weeks or even months. Further investigations take up to a year or more to complete. That depends in part on the condition of the black boxes and where to decode them.

Chinese officials did not disclose where they plan to decode China Eastern Airlines’ black boxes. However, in investigations, they are often deciphered in the country if the technology is available. If the cockpit voice recorder is severely damaged, authorities must deliver the device to an overseas agency or manufacturer.

The China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 with 132 people on board was scheduled to fly from Kunming to Guangzhou. However, the plane crashed and caught fire on the afternoon of March 21 in a mountain village in Teng county, Wuzhou town of Guangxi province. There were no survivors from the accident.