Chinese officials recover cockpit voice recorder of China Eastern MU5735

The first of two black boxes of China Eastern flight MU5735 was found on Wednesday.

The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) appeared to have survived the impact in relatively good shape and was being sent to Beijing for analysis.

It is expected to provide investigators with details of the communications between the flight's three pilots, which is one more than is normally required aboard a Boeing 737-800 plane.

Flight MU5735 was en route from Kunming to Guangzhou when it crashed on Monday, carrying 132 people onboard.

According to flight-tracking website FlightRadar24, the plane briefly appeared to pull out of its nosedive before plunging again into a heavily forested slope in the mountainous Guangxi region of southern China.

Chinese authorities said the pilots did not respond to repeated calls from air traffic controllers during the rapid descent.