Originally Posted by
BuzzBox
Sure, but given the aircraft was pulverised by the high-speed impact, I'm surprised they've been able to find and identify DNA material from ALL of the occupants in such a short space of time.
Based on what I have seen the aircraft is fragmented and the fragments are bent and torn with no sign of fire on them (there was a fire in the trees above the crash site, so apparently some fuel has been thrown forward and up).The largest pieces are parts (top and or bottom panel fragments) of the wing(s) which are a few meters long and say half to one meter wide. One of the engines (bare engine only, no cowlings) was easily identifiable, the other may have been found too as there are two stacks of engine components. Another parts seems to be a part of the THS and another part of the wing. Both are a few meters long, but can be carried by say 6-7 guys. Until now I have only seen one piece of wiring of about 20cm long. No instruments shown at all, but reported that manuals from the cockpit had been recovered. Next to that many white bins with fragments.
In one of the early press conferences they mentioned that all the passengers were Chinese nationals. So there was no need to go into the more lengthy process of asking foreigners to come forward. Based on this you might say that there is a difference in identification time between an all nationals flight and a flight with a mix of (inter-)national passengers.
China makes extensive use of facial recognition, a BBC video showed they could find a reporter in Shanghai or similar within 7 minutes, so they might have used that to take a look at images at the airport to confirm who actually entered the aircraft. On the first day they mentioned one more passenger than thereafter.
Many countries have identification processes in place these days to enable quick identification. The area was hot (30C) and very humid (heavy rain for days), so they had to work fast.
During the weekend the investigation and authorities declared all PoB deceased. From that point on they start making more use of heavy machinery and are building and widening roads to support the recovery effort. The continuous rain has made this a big effort.