Mr Zhu said the severe damage to the aircraft, which was carrying 132 people, would make it difficult to establish why the plane fell 30,000 feet. The CAACs initial accident report says air traffic controllers tried to call the 737s pilots during the descent but received no response. A China Eastern passenger jet crashed into the mountains on Monday, March 21, with 132 passengers on board. But other Chinese airlines continued operating the type. China Eastern Boeing 737 nosedive was intentional. Both aircraft recorders were severely damaged and were sent to Washington for further investigation. China Eastern flight MU5735 was on its way from Kunming to Guangzhou on March 21 when it dropped from its cruising altitude into the mountains of Guangxi in the southern part of China. The plane was carrying 123 passengers and nine crew members from the city of Kunming in Chinas southwest to Guangzhou, an export hub in the southeast. 2 min read. Zhu Tao, director of aviation safety at the Civil Aviation Administration of China, has said the investigation . Ice accumulation on the wings caused the plane to lose its lift, causing the crash. An official from the regulatory body said that "safety is serious business" and that the situation was being closely monitored. [40], Wet weather and the challenging accessibility of the crash site hampered the recovery process. What will it take to Decarbonise Aviation? But Chinese searchers did indeed locate both the flight data and cockpit voice recorders shortly after the crash. His family said he had taken a job at Guardian Flight last year. [71], Within two hours of the crash 20 people claimed to have "survived" by not boarding the flight. Many smaller pieces of wreckage were scattered in the surrounding area. On 19 February 1985, the Boeing 747SP operating the flight was involved in an aircraft upset accident, following the failure of the No. The CAAC published a preliminary report on April 20, 30 days after the accident. SpiceJet, Vistara and Air India Express have the aircraft in their fleets. China claims that no official information about the China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 crash had been released to media, though it stopped short of denying claims that the crash was intentional. China Eastern flight MU5735 took off on 21 March from Kunming, heading east and climbing to a cruise altitude of 29,100ft. The near-vertical descent of the plane, they believe, would've required intentional force. [75][27] On the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, China Eastern shares dropped by 6.5 percent. Still, data does suggest an extreme rate of descent and safety experts say only a handful of other crashes involved comparable descent rates, two of which resulted from deliberate pilot action. Sources China Eastern Black Box Points to Intentional Nosedive (WSJ) The crash site is surrounded on three sides by mountains and is accessible only onfoot and by motorcycle on a steep dirt road in the semitropical Guangxi region, famed for some of China's most spectacular scenery. A sudden human input to the plane's controls appears to have caused a China Eastern flight to plunge nearly vertically into the mountains of Southern China in March, killing all 132 passengers onboard, according to preliminary findings from US authorities investigating the crash. After officials initially failed to answer basic questions about the plane and its pilots, they were accused by online commentators of "rainbow farts," an idiom for excessive praise. The accident happened on November 13 last year, leaving one dead. Boeing has expressed dismay with Chinas Big Three carriers placing an order for 292 A320neo family jets on 1 July. All Rights Reserved All information related to that investigation will be released by the CAAC.". Beijing A China Eastern passenger jet carrying 132 people crashed in southern China on Monday, aviation authorities said. It had been buried 1.5 metres (5ft) deep in the soil and appeared slightly dented but was intact. [24][25], The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) and the airline reported 123 passengers and 9 crew members to be on the flight, for a total of 132 people. 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[46] Boeing said that it was informed by initial reports and was gathering details. Moreover, the Civil Aviation Authority of China (CAAC), which is leading the probe with US assistance, has yet to issue any safety directives regarding any issues with the 737-800. They will examine pieces of the wreckage for clues. "The jet was seriously damaged during the crash, and investigations will face a very high level of difficulty," Mr Zhu said. ABC News' Mark Osborne contributed to this report. The jet was a Boeing 737-800, a model long viewed as a reliable workhorse in the industry. Investigators looking into the crash are examining whether it was due to intentional action on the flight deck, with no evidence found of a technical malfunction, according to Reuters, which cited two people briefed on the matter. The US Federal Aviation Administration is investigating what it calls another close call involving two aircraft coming way too close, this time at BostonLogonInternational airport. 24/7 coverage of breaking news and live events. The flight crew consisted of three pilots, five flight attendants and an in-flight security guard. The planes altitude dropped from 8869m to 1333.5m in the span of three minutes, state news agency China News Service reported, citing VariFlight, a Chinese technology company that provides civil aviation data services. Details about the crash remain sparse, but the information available seems to suggest either that the jet suffered some type of incredibly unusual flight-control problem, or that one of its pilots put the 737 into a dive. The China Eastern flight was aboard a Boeing model 737-800, a widely used plane with one of the best safety records in commercial aviation. The steepness of the slope made the positioning of heavy equipment difficult. [18] It was the first fatal crash involving China Eastern Airlines since November 2004's Flight 5210. Chinese officials leading the crash investigation have not flagged any apparent mechanical or flight problems with the plane. At 15:56, firefighters from nearby Tangbu arrived, and at 16:40, firefighters from outside Wuzhou were dispatched from Guilin, Beihai, Hezhou, Laibin and Hechi. The plane slammed into the ground with such force that it created a 66-foot deep hole in the ground, according to Chinese officials. BEIJING Even after the finding of the two "black boxes," it may be a long time before investigators figure out what caused a China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 to nosedive into the. Nobody can come up with a mechanical failure mode that would make the airplane behave the way it did, Goglia adds. [21][22], The 737-800 has a solid safety record, with 11 previous fatal accidents (the first in September 2006) out of more than 7,000 planes delivered since 1997. China Eastern responded immediately to the crash by grounding its 737-800s. Boeing 737 Max jets, which first flew in 2017, were grounded after crashes in 2018 and 2019 . The plane has been flying since 1998 and has an excellent safety record, said Hassan Shahidi, president of the Flight Safety Foundation. [44], The CAAC enabled an emergency task force and dispatched a team to the crash site. [29][30] It was sent to Beijing for data extraction. It was operating a routine flight between Kunming and Guangzhou, the airline's hub near the southeastern border with Hong Kong. The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) told China's state-run daily Global Times on Wednesday (18), that it has confirmed with staff from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) participating in the investigation into the crash of China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735, that they have not released any information about the investigation, refuting previous foreign media . A Boeing 737 jet crashed into a hillside in Southern China on March 21, killing 132 people on board. Indonesian investigators said they found insufficient evidence to determine the cause. Guide to Business Aviation Training and Safety 2022. Chinese officials have also said that the China Eastern flight did not send out any distress signals before crashing, and that communications between the vessel and air traffic control didnt indicate anything abnormal before the crash, casting doubt on a cockpit breach. Cox also cites two similar 737 crashes caused by a rudder servo valve problem: USAir flight 427 (a 737-300) in 1994, and United Airlines flight 585 (a 737-200) in 1991. But the details available even before the Journals report had already given rise to pilot suicide as a leading theory among accident analysts not involved in the investigation. Commentary: Chinese Spy Balloon Hysteria or Not? Shell Aviation: What will it take to Decarbonise Aviation? The plane did what it was told to do by someone in the cockpit, one individual told the Journal. That kind of vertical dive, without a radio call of any kind from the flightcrew, could clearly indicate a human activity to make that happen, says aviation safety consultant and former National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) member John Goglia. And while cockpit intrusion remains a possibility, pilot murder-suicide seems likelier, as ATC received no hijacking coded message from the crew, and the cockpit door, as is the case in the United States, is strongly secured. If you continue on this website you must agree to our Website Terms and our Privacy Policy [46] The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said a senior official had been appointed as its representative to the inquiry. [56] No components of common explosives were detected. [34] By evening, 117 out of 650 dispatched rescuers were nearby and headed to the site from three directions. [26] Liu Ning, secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in Guangxi, visited the crash site and ordered an "all-out" search and rescue operation. [54] Concurrently, on April 1, a team of NTSB investigators left the United States for China. Three days after the China Eastern Airlines flight fell from the sky, there are more questions than answers. [39] Rescue workers found a 1.3-metre-long (4ft 3in) wreckage fragment, believed to be part of the aircraft, 10 kilometres (6mi) from the main site. No survivors were found at the crash site, and the planes black box was recovered several feet underground. [47] United States Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg said on 23 March that Chinese authorities had invited the NTSB to take part in the investigation. China Eastern Airbus A320. Data from one of planes black box flight recorders, suggests inputs to controls pushed plane into fatal dive Wall Street Journal reports, citing people familiar with preliminary assessment. Guide to Business Aviation Training and Safety 2022. Nobody can come up with a mechanical failure mode that would make the airplane behave the way it did.. Turn on desktop notifications for breaking stories about interest? It ignited a fire big enough to be seen on NASA satellite images before firefighters could extinguish it. They cited ICAO guidelines that assign the country in which the crash occurred with responsibility for releasing information. The crash has caused shock in China, where President Xi Jinping has ordered an immediate investigation to determine the cause. [16] Footage from the crash site showed wreckage and a fire. The China Eastern Airlines Corp. jet was flying a normal route to Guangzhou when it suddenly nosed over at cruise altitude and dove. 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