Both flight recorders or “black boxes” have been recovered from the crash of a China Eastern Boeing 737-800 that killed all 132 people on board, Chinese state media has said.
Aviation officials earlier confirmed they had found the separate cockpit voice recorder.
Searchers found the second box, the flight data recorder, on a mountain slope, buried about 1.5 metres underground by the impact, the state broadcaster CCTV said.
The impact of the crash scattered debris widely and created a 20-metre deep pit in the side of the mountain.
The jet was flying between the cities of Kunming and Guangzhou on Monday when it nosedived into a mountainside with 132 people on board, all of whom were killed. The cause of the disaster is not yet known.
Dozens of victims’ relatives waited for days as rescue teams combed heavily forested slopes for plane debris and signs of survivors from Monday’s crash near the city of Wuzhou in Guangxi province.
“The second black box from China Eastern flight MU5735 was recovered on March 27,” Xinhua news agency reported.
The plane was equipped with two flight recorders: one in the rear passenger cabin tracking flight data, and the other a cockpit voice recorder.
The latter was found on Wednesday and sent to Beijing for analysis, which is expected to take several more days.
The second black box contains data such as speed, altitude and heading.
With both now recovered, investigators should be able to begin to piece together what caused the plane to fall more than 6,000 metres (20,000 feet) in just over a minute.
Hundreds of people, including firefighters, doctors and investigators, remain at the scene of the tragedy recovering human remains and the wreckage of the plane.
Chinese Civil Aviation Administration (CAAC) said on Saturday evening that all of the people on board the aircraft had died, and that it had confirmed almost all of their identities through DNA testing.
“All 123 passengers and nine crew members of flight MU5735 of China Eastern airlines have been killed on board on 21 March,” Hu Zhenjiang, deputy director general of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, told a press conference. “The identity of 120 victims has been determined by DNA identification.”
The incident has mystified aviation authorities, who have scoured rugged terrain for evidence in what is almost certain to be China’s deadliest plane crash in nearly 30 years.
The disaster provoked an unusually swift public response from the president, Xi Jinping, who ordered an investigation into its cause as aviation authorities vowed an extensive two-week check-up of China’s vast passenger fleet.
