Both flight data recorders from last weekend's airplane tragedy have now been recovered: one at 11:40 AM and the other at 12:49 PM today.

The search for victims' remains ended yesterday at the site of a plane crash, but efforts to locate the flight data recorders had been hampered due to cold weather.

Fifty-four people were killed, including one on the ground, when a jet carrying 47 passengers and 6 crew fell to the ground on Sunday morning, shortly after it took off from Baotou, Inner Mongolia.

Many of the 300 or so victims' relatives who are now at the scene have been unable to bid farewell  to their loved ones due to the damage inflicted on them as the plane fell, said Liu Huanxin, director of a local funeral parlor. 

Wang Xianzheng, leader of the crash investigators and director of the State Administration for Production Safety, assured relatives that they would be dealt with fairly.

"But it may take some time for emergency response workers to identify the remains of those killed in the tragedy," Wang said.

The small aircraft, a CRJ-200 supplied by Canadian-based Bombardier Aerospace and owned by China Eastern Airlines, was bound for Shanghai.

Following the accident, shares in Bombardier slipped 20 cents to 2.50 Canadian dollars (US$2) on the Toronto stock market on Monday, Xinhua News Agency reported.

A spokesperson from the company said about 900 CRJ-200s are in service, and the 50-seat aircraft have flown a total of 9 million flight hours since 1992.

An accident response team consisting of three experts from Bombardier and two Canadian officials from the Transportation Safety Board will arrive at the accident site today, Jeff Chen, Bombardier's spokesperson in China, said.

On Tuesday, the branch office of China Life Insurance in Inner Mongolia began to payouts to family members of people who had taken out policies before the crash. The family of each insured victim is expected to receive 400,000 yuan (US$48,192).

(China Daily, Xinhua News Agency November 24,2 004)