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China’s Devastating Plane Crash – What We Know So Far

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By Akerele Christabel

March 27, 2022
6:59 pm
Los Angeles, CA

On Monday, the 737NG, a plane from the China Eastern Airline crashed during a domestic flight into the mountain sides of eastern China leading to the death of 132 persons that were on board, including crew members. The Director of Aviation Consultancy in a statement reveals that; The 737NG has been in operation for 25 years and has an excellent safety record… If the FlightRadar24 logs are accurate, something seems to have happened abruptly and the plane nose-dived from cruising altitude. The cruising altitude was 29100 ft from which it plummeted to an altitude of 9075ft in 2 minutes and 15 seconds before finally going off radar at 3225ft as recorded by the flight tracking website, FlightRadar 24 after 2.22pm local time. Flight MU5735 took off from Kunming at

The Director of Aviation Consultancy in a statement reveals that;

The 737NG has been in operation for 25 years and has an excellent safety record… If the FlightRadar24 logs are accurate, something seems to have happened abruptly and the plane nose-dived from cruising altitude.

The cruising altitude was 29100 ft from which it plummeted to an altitude of 9075ft in 2 minutes and 15 seconds before finally going off radar at 3225ft as recorded by the flight tracking website, FlightRadar 24 after 2.22pm local time.

Flight MU5735 took off from Kunming at 13:11 local time (05:11 GMT) and was due to arrive, two provinces across, in Guangzhou at 15:05.

This was on a routine flight for the plane and it usually lasted 2 hours between two major cities in southern China. It was carrying a total of 124 passengers and 9 crew members. The abrupt turn of events begun just over an hour into its course.

Several theories have emerged to explain the cause of the crash as the world waits for more information upon the retrieval of the planes black box.

One of those theories is the possibility that there was a catastrophic failure of the structure of the airplane possibly related to the tail area. Some suggest that this might be due to the detachment of the vertical stabilizer of the aircraft. Even though the reason for such a claim is yet to be discovered, there are suggestions that it could be related to maybe a corrosion problem on the back of the airplane.

There is also a suggestion of a possible bomb problem.

According to Dr Sonya Brown, an aviation expert from the University of New South Wales, it is quite unconventional for planes to dive nose first like this. Planes are designed to glide, not plummet like this even if all engines stopped working.

This leads to a second possibility, a man made or pilot error. “On analysis of the pilots, we discovered that the performance of the three pilots had been good and their family life relatively harmonious,” said airline spokesman Shangguan Xuemin, “The captain had 6,709 hours flying experience, while the first and second officers had 31,769 hours and 556 hours respectively.” he continued.

The precedence for all these suggestions come from previous airplane crashes very similar to this particular crash.

When asked about the reliability of the 737-800 plane due to this event and many similar events in the last decade involving the model, Geoffrey Thomas, West Australian Aviation Editor explains that the 737 is the most reliable plane in the world and thus travelers should not have a problem with boarding this plan.

So far the two black boxes have been discovered. According to Xinhua news agency, the first black box- the cockpit recorder- was found on Wednesday 23rd March 2022. The second black box responsible for recording flight data (speed, altitude and heading) was discovered on Sunday 27th March 2022. Investigations have begun to try to piece together the events that might have caused the crash, however such an investigation might take months or years to reach a confident conclusion.

What is happening now?

Chinese investigators in conjunction with US aviation experts continue to lead the investigation that involves more than 600 workers who have embarked on a very difficult recovery mission. Most passengers aboard the plane have been accounted for through DNA analysis.

China is carrying out a two-week safety check up on all its planes to allay fears. They have also offered to help 110 families who might have ‘suffered a loss’.