China Eastern Plane Crash: Rescuers Find Suspected Engine, Hunt for Second Black Box

The first recovered black box was believed to be the cockpit voice recorder. Made by

Honeywell International Inc.,

the devices—the second being the flight-data recorder—may provide vital evidence for investigators trying to understand what caused the plane to nosedive into a terraced field in China’s Guangxi region on Monday.

The positioning signal of the second black box—actually an orange-colored device—couldn’t be detected at the scene, and its signal transmitter may have been damaged, China’s state broadcaster CCTV reported Thursday, citing experts.

Rescuers, some in orange firefighter uniforms and red helmets and others in white hazmat suits, gathered in the forested hill, where tree branches and pieces of plane wreckage lay scattered on the muddy ground, footage from CCTV showed. Among the wreckage, rescuers have found what they suspect is the engine, CCTV said. Some rescuers walked around puddles in their dusty gumboots, while others used red shovels to dig out a part of the plane’s wings.

Weather conditions weren’t dangerous at the time of the crash, according to authorities. Beijing’s cabinet, the State Council, ordered an immediate investigation into the potential safety hazards in the civil aviation industry, the Ministry of Emergency Management said.

Air-traffic controllers and the crew on nearby flights repeatedly tried, in vain, to reach the jet after it crashed, recordings of the radio communication published by Chinese media, including the People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship outlet, showed.

More than 50 psychologists have arrived to provide counseling to the relatives of passengers who had rushed to the crash scene, and dozens of psychiatrists organized by Guangxi’s Wuzhou city are standing by, CCTV reported Thursday.

There has been heavy rain this week at the crash site, where search teams have scoured tens of thousands of square meters of land looking for the missing passengers and plane wreckage. At one point, a landslide triggered by the rain blocked a key path in the crash site, CCTV reported.

China Eastern has been in contact with the families of all 123 passengers, but authorities haven’t released their names and that of the aircrew. A chief financial officer of a Shenzhen-listed company, and two people working for the Guangdong branch of a large accounting firm, were among the passengers, the companies have said.

Airline officials have said a captain and two co-pilots were on the plane, and that the second co-pilot was an observer on board to gain experience, a practice they said was in line with regulations.

According to state-controlled and industry media outlets, the captain, Yang Hongda, was the son of a senior pilot, and the first officer was identified as Zhang Zhengping, a five-star pilot nearing retirement who was among the first batch of pilots to be trained to fly commercial aircraft in the early years of China’s post-Mao reform era.

—Rachel Liang contributed to this article.

Write to Elaine Yu at elaine.yu@wsj.com