China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735: America’s NTSB is helping Chinese officials decipher black box clues

US National Transportation Safety Board and black box makers Honeywell International are helping Chinese investigators read data from crashed plane

NTSB and Boeing experts left for China on Friday and will follow coronavirus protocols similar to Winter Olympics to allow them to work on probe immediately

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The second black box recovered at the crash site of MU5735 in Tengxian County, south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 1:43pm, 4 Apr 2022Updated: 3:42pm, 4 Apr 2022

The US National Transportation Safety Board has been helping Chinese officials download two black box recorders that were damaged in the mysterious crash of a Boeing 737 aircraft on March 21.

The work to decipher the final sounds caught by cockpit microphones on the doomed China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735 aircraft was being carried out in the NTSB’s lab in Washington, spokesman Peter Knudson said in an email. He declined to discuss how or when the cockpit recorder was brought to the lab, which is routinely used by investigators around the world after accidents.

The second so-called black box is the flight data recorder, which captures hundreds of data parameters tracking an aircraft’s path and how its systems are performing. It was also brought to the US, said a person familiar with the effort.

Another NTSB spokesman, Eric Weiss, said he could not comment on any information involving the second recorder.

The work is being aided by technicians from Honeywell International, which made the recorders, according to another person familiar with the work. The people were granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive inquiry.

Both devices were damaged in the high-impact crash, Chinese investigators have said.