Jamie Freed, Tim Hepher

(Reuters] – Chinese authorities claimed Wednesday that one of the black boxes belonging to a China Eastern Airlines Jet (NYSE) was recovered by Chinese officials. The jet plunged into a mountainside with 132 people aboard.

According to an aviation official in China, the device was the cockpit voice recorder of the aircraft. This is based upon an initial assessment.

Honeywell (NASDAQ) manufactured both of the black boxes in the aircraft’s jet, the regulator stated without naming models.

This is the way that black box reading works.

What are BLACK BOXES?

They’re not really black, but they are highly-visible orange. Although experts disagree on the origin of the name, it is now synonymous with searching for answers after a plane crashes.

They were invented by David Warren, an Australian scientist in 1950s. These are required.

It is not the goal to create legal liability, but rather to find causes and prevent future accidents.

HOW DID THEY EVOLVED??

Early devices only recorded data on foil or wire. Modern ones use solid state memory.

They are stored in crash-survivable containers, which can withstand 3,400x the force of gravity at impact.

These blackbox recordings were taken from an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX accident in March 2019. The plane crashed at a high speed and was thrown into the ground, just like the China Eastern aircraft.

WHAT ARE THEY?

The main components are approximately 10 pounds and 4.5 kilograms in weight.

* a chassis or interface designed to secure the device and facilitate recording and playback

* an underwater locator beacon

* the core housing or “Crash-Survivable Memory Unit” made of stainless steel or titanium

* inside there, the recordings on chips or older formats.

A cockpit voice recorder is used to record pilot sounds. The flight data recorder captures parameters such as altitude, head, and airspeed.

WHAT MANAGEMENT IS PERFORMED WITH RECORDS?

To ensure that they don’t accidentally delete data, technicians remove protective materials and clean up connections. You must download and copy the audio file or data file.

At first, data is meaningless. Before it can be converted into graphs, the data must first be decoded.

Sometimes, investigators use “spectral analyses” to examine sounds. This allows them to detect faint alarms and the beginning of an explosion.

WHAT INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE

This will be dependent on which models the Honeywell recorders are, which have not been revealed.

A 737-800 Air India Express with two Honeywell Black boxes, that crashed in 2020 following an overrun in heavy rains had a CVR capable 120 minutes of digital audio. According to a final investigation into the accident.

This would cover the flight of 66 minutes to China Eastern.

FDR of the Air India Express plane collected approximately 25 hours flight data.

WHERE WILL THE DATA BE READED

Zhu Tao, a Chinese official with China’s aviation regulator, stated that the initial black box is being sent to Beijing for analysis. The time it takes will depend on the severity of the damage.

DATE DURING WHICH RESULTS WILL BE MADE PUBLISHABLE

While interim reports are available after one month, these are sometimes sparse. For more detailed investigations, it may take over a year.

Experts believe that air crashes are often caused by multiple factors.