The black box of the Vietnamese coast guard airplane which crashed off the northern coastline earlier this month has been retrieved by search and rescue units.

The flight recorder of the Spanish-made CASA-212 was discovered by search and rescue teams under the Ministry of National Defense and the naval force in an area about 26 nautical miles southeast of Bach Long Vi Island off the northern city of Hai Phong on Monday.

The device was salvaged from about 50 to 60 meters underwater, including the flight data recorder and a cockpit voice recorder, Vice Admiral Pham Ngoc Minh, Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Vietnam People’s Army, said during a news program on national broadcaster Vietnam Television.

According to Major General Nguyen Huu Chi, deputy commander of the Vietnam People’s Air Force, the discovery of the black box is of great significance in figuring out the cause of the accident and in preventing future crashes.   

The Ministry of National Defense and the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam, in coordination with Airbus Group, parent manufacturer of the airplane, have received the equipment for analysis.

Military officials inspect two parts of the black box. Photo: Tuoi Tre 

Two more bodies suspected to be from the nine flight crew members were also recovered on the same day, close to where the black box was located, according to an official from the People’s Committee on Bach Long Vi.

The bodies were then transferred to hospital ship HQ-561 in order to be preserved and identified.

The first four bodies were found last week, of which one appeared to belong to Nguyen Van Chinh, a crew member aboard the plane, based on his uniform and personal documents.

The Spanish-made CASA-212 aircraft, carrying nine members of a search crew and captained by Colonel Le Kiem Toan, lost contact around 12:30 pm on June 16 after flying 44 nautical miles southwest of Bach Long Vi.

The coast guard aircraft had taken off from the Gia Lam military airport in Hanoi the same day to carry out a search and rescue mission for the then-missing pilot of the crashed Russian-made fighter jet Su30MK2 whose body was found on June 17 at a location 33 nautical miles from Hon Me Islet off the north-central province of Thanh Hoa.

The Vietnamese fighter jet disappeared from radar screens on June 14 during a training session over the sea, with one pilot confirmed dead and the other brought to safety.

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