China said it hasn’t found any evidence of explosive materials in the wreckage of a China Eastern Airlines flight that crashed with 132 people on board.
“Lab tests taken of 66 samples, 41 of which have been completed, showed no major common inorganic explosive or common organic explosive substances have been found,” fire official Zheng Xi said at a briefing in the southern city of Wuzhou on Saturday.
Zhu Tao, an official with the Civil Aviation Administration of China, added that investigators found a transmitter installed close to a missing black box that records flight data, but haven’t retrieved the device itself. A black box that captures voices in the cockpit was found earlier.
Some 24,000 pieces of wreckage have been retrieved, officials said, and remains of 120 people have been identified. The search is focused on an area with a radius of 300 meters (about 330 yards) from the main crash site, though part of a wingtip was found 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) away.
The CAAC held another briefing Saturday night in Wuzhou to declare that all 132 passengers and crew were dead. China Eastern expressed its condolences in a tweet.
Rescue officials at the first press conference described a difficult search of the crash site, and showed pictures of investigators slogging through mud. The China Eastern Airlines 737-800 NG went down in the southern region of Guangxi on March 21 while flying from Kunming to Guangzhou, China’s fifth largest city.
The plane plummeted from its cruise altitude of 29,000 feet, leveled off once and then appeared to fall straight down. Chinese state media have said the crash left a crater 20 meters (66 feet) deep.
Boeing Co. on Saturday extended its condolences to the victims of the crash and said it will continue to support its airline customers during this time. “In addition a Boeing technical team is supporting the NTSB and the Civil Aviation Administration of China who will lead the investigation,” according to a spokesperson.
The National Transportation Safety Board on Saturday declined to comment on a report on Twitter that said an Air China Ltd. plane is heading to the U.S. as part of the probe. The plane is headed to Washington to “pick up” NTSB investigators, the China Aviation Review wrote in a tweet, without saying where it obtained the information.
All information must come from the CAAC, the NTSB said. The agency is assisting the probe under a United Nations treaty, but hasn’t announced plans to send any investigators to China.
“The NTSB and the CAAC continue to coordinate on the investigation into the China Eastern B-737 accident,” the NTSB said. “This includes coordination on potential travel of investigators to China or the U.S., as necessary.”
A China Eastern spokesman attended the earlier briefing on Saturday, saying that it’s been difficult to meet all the needs of relatives of the passengers on the flight.
Many of the relatives are staying at a hotel near the crash site, officials have said.
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