Black Boxes Badly Damaged, No Clues To Explain Plane Crash: China

China Eastern flight MU5735 from Kunming to Guangzhou plunged from cruising altitude into the mountains of Guangxi on March 21 in China's first fatal air crash since 2010.

China said on Wednesday the black boxes of a Boeing 737-800 jet that crashed last month were badly damaged, leaving virtually no publicly available clues to explain its violent plunge into a wooded hillside, killing all 132 people on board.

China Eastern flight MU5735 from Kunming to Guangzhou plunged from cruising altitude into the mountains of Guangxi on March 21 in China's first fatal air crash since 2010.

Summarising its preliminary crash report, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) suggested little if any information had been recovered from the cockpit voice and data recorders after they were sent to Washington for analysis.

"The two recorders on the plane were severely damaged due to the impact, and the data restoration and analysis work is still in progress," CAAC said in a statement.