Both flight data recorders from last weekend's airplane tragedy
have now been recovered: one at 11:40 AM and the other at 12:49 PM
today.
The search for victims' remains ended yesterday at the site of a
plane crash, but efforts to locate the flight data recorders had
been hampered due to cold weather.
Fifty-four people were killed, including one on the ground, when
a jet carrying 47 passengers and 6 crew fell to the ground on
Sunday morning, shortly after it took off from Baotou, Inner
Mongolia.
Many of the 300 or so victims' relatives who are now at the
scene have been unable to bid farewell? to their loved ones
due to the damage inflicted on them as the plane fell, said Liu
Huanxin, director of a local funeral parlor.?
Wang Xianzheng, leader of the crash investigators and director
of the State Administration for Production Safety, assured
relatives that they would be dealt with fairly.
"But it may take some time for emergency response workers to
identify the remains of those killed in the tragedy," Wang
said.
The small aircraft, a CRJ-200 supplied by Canadian-based
Bombardier Aerospace and owned by China Eastern Airlines, was bound
for Shanghai.
Following the accident, shares in Bombardier slipped 20 cents to
2.50 Canadian dollars (US$2) on the Toronto stock market on Monday,
Xinhua News Agency reported.
A spokesperson from the company said about 900 CRJ-200s are in
service, and the 50-seat aircraft have flown a total of 9 million
flight hours since 1992.
An accident response team consisting of three experts from
Bombardier and two Canadian officials from the Transportation
Safety Board will arrive at the accident site today, Jeff Chen,
Bombardier's spokesperson in China, said.
On Tuesday, the branch office of China Life Insurance in Inner
Mongolia began to payouts to family members of people who had taken
out policies before the crash. The family of each insured victim is
expected to receive 400,000 yuan (US$48,192).
(China Daily, Xinhua News Agency November 24,2 004)
