After a day of flight MU5735 crashing in southern China, rescue teams found no survivors among the 132 people on board. Searches continue, but local media said live passengers are unlikely to be found given the plane’s violent impact on a mountainside, the worst plane crash in China in at least a decade. Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered a thorough investigation and there are still some issues to be resolved.
MU5735
Flight MU5735, operated by a China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737800, took off from Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, at 1:11 p.m. local time (6:11 a.m. in Italy) for a journey that should have taken about an hour and a half after Guangzhou, a major port city northwest of Hong Kong. However, after about an hour of flight, something happened on board or the aircraft, resulting in a rapid loss of altitude and crash in an area near Wuzhou, Guangxi.
According to the online service Flightradar24, which tracks and tracks the movements of thousands of aircraft every day, around 2:20 p.m. the Boeing 737800 began to lose altitude very quickly. From an altitude of about 9,000 meters, it dropped to 2,500 meters in just over a minute, then rose slightly for a few moments before seemingly plummeting out of control again.
Flight MU5735 Altitude changes in feet (ASN)
The final moments before the mountainside crash would have been captured on surveillance camera, according to the manager of a local mining company. The video, which seems to show an almost vertical plane, has been shared a lot on social networks, but it is difficult to verify and those who published it have not given many other details.
At the time of the accident, in the Guangxi area where flight MU5735 was based, no weatherrelated problems were reported with moderate winds (less than 20 km/h) and visibility of about 15 km. Rain was expected in the evening, but the sky was only overcast at the time of the accident.
relief
The plane crashed into the trees on a mountainside, causing a fire that complicated rescuers’ activities. In the hours after the accident, the area was reached by hundreds of people who approached the plane’s wreckage to search for survivors among the 132 people on board. It was difficult to find the debris yourself as it was spread over a large part of the slope from the strong impact.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Tuesday he was deeply saddened by the crash of the China Eastern Airlines passenger plane, adding that search and rescue missions are underway to find out the cause of the incident as soon as possible . #MU5735 pic.twitter.com/ljxv6TXmRj
CGTN (@CGTNOfficial) March 22, 2022
Relatives and friends of the passengers and crew learned the news from the Chinese media or were contacted by the authorities. Many of them then traveled to Guangzhou Airport, where the plane was due to land, and awaited news from the airline.
Additional teams of rescuers and experts arrive at the crash site in Guangxi #MU5735
Latest: https://t.co/DY5HA70Ny4 pic.twitter.com/U5qdKKIHBs
CGTN (@CGTNOfficial) March 22, 2022
The search for the black box, the device that collects information about the aircraft’s status in flight and the commands given by the crew, among other things, is still ongoing. Together with the recording of the conversations in the cockpit, it should provide important data for reconstructing the causes of the accident. However, it can take months before you have a complete analysis of the data.
Boeing 737800
Boeing’s 737800s are among the most popular aircraft in civil aviation, flying hundreds of thousands of people around the world every day. Between 1998 and 2020, Boeing has delivered almost 5,000 to various airlines, mainly for the management of short and mediumhaul flights.
Of the approximately 25,000 aircraft in service worldwide, an estimated 17 percent are Boeing 737800s in their various configurations. Over 1,200 are deployed in China, and around a thousand in Europe. The high number in Europe is influenced by the agreements reached over the years between Boeing and some lowcost airlines such as Ryanair, which employ more than 400 people.
(Boing)
In decades of service, the Boeing 737800s have proven to be reliable and safe, which is why, according to several aviation experts, it is unlikely that the plane of flight MU5735 had a technical problem common to all models of this type. The causes are therefore likely to be different from those identified in recent years for the Boeing 737 MAX, which caused two serious plane crashes and the suspension of these models worldwide.
China is Boeing’s second most important market after the United States. After a slight slowdown from the coronavirus pandemic, demand for new aircraft is growing strongly and is expected to double by 2040, with orders for at least 8,700 new aircraft over the next few years.
The Chinese market is also of great interest to Europe’s Airbus, which has recently been working hard to design and produce newgeneration aircraft that use less fuel, the cost that has the greatest impact on airline management . However, China is considering alternative routes and is developing its own competitor to the 737 the Comac C919 which is scheduled to make its maiden flight later this year. However, many years will pass before the model is ready and produced on a large scale.