A plane, model Boeing 737-800, with 132 people on board crashed in the mountainous region of Guangxi, in southern China, on Monday (21). The China Eastern Airlines aircraft left the city of Kunming and was bound for Guangzhou.
A video obtained by Chinese state media shows the moment Flight 5735 crashes with its beak facing the ground. According to Chinese media, all passengers and crew died.
Data from Flightradar24, a specialized website that computes the routes of all registered flights in the world, shows that the Boeing 737 stopped transmitting data during a part of the trip.
Minutes after leveling off to a cruising altitude of 8,839 meters after a first descent – already sending a signal again – the plane began a rapid dive, descending more than 7,620 meters in less than two minutes. Flight data was lost 975 meters above the ground. (see the montage above and the video below, in English)
Mark Weiss, a retired pilot, analyzed that this model does not have the technology that could have caused accidents with the Boeing 737 Max.
“This is probably one of the safest models ever built. This was the model before the Max and it didn’t have the MCAS system in it.” “Same plane, different problems”, he adds.
The 737-800 is the second most used aircraft in the world, with more than 4,500 units in all countries. In the United States alone, there are 800 such planes.
China Eastern Airlines said it will leave its entire fleet of the model on the ground while investigations continue.
Another expert heard by the CNN pointed out that the first evidence is “ominous”.
“I’m afraid that the first evidence of this accident suggests that you will investigate the flight crew more carefully,” he said.
Dozens of investigators were sent to the crash site, which is difficult to access because it is a mountainous region with dense vegetation.
No survivors have been found so far, as well as their belongings. However, this Wednesday (23), one of the two black boxes of the aircraft was found. It was not immediately possible to identify whether it was the flight data recorder or the cockpit voice recorder, an official with the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said.
As it is a Boeing model, a US team led by an investigator from the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was assigned to the investigation, as were representatives from Boeing itself, GE – the maker of the turbines – and of the US Federal Aviation Administration.
China’s government still classifies the operation as a rescue, but as time passes and the circumstances of the accident are analyzed, it has become a “recovery operation”.
But this entire complex process can take months, if not years, to complete, even as investigators are under a lot of pressure from bereaved families and the general public.
The accident
The flight departed Kunming at 1:11 pm local time (02:11 GMT), FlightRadar data showed, and was due to land in Guangzhou at 3:05 pm (04:11 am).
The plane was flying at an altitude of 29,100 feet at 03:20 GMT. Just over two minutes and 15 seconds later, the data showed it had descended to 9,075 feet.
In another 20 seconds, its last tracked altitude was 3,225 feet, indicating a vertical descent of 31,000 feet per minute, according to Flightradar. Weather data available online showed partly cloudy conditions with good visibility in Wuzhou at the time of the accident.
Investigators will attempt to recover the plane’s two black boxes – the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder – to help clarify the accident.
According to the Aviation Safety Network, the last fatal jet crash in China was in 2010, when 44 of the 96 people on board died when a Henan Airlines Embraer E-190 regional jet crashed on approach to Yichun airport, which was low visibility.
In 1994, a China Northwest Airlines Tupolev Tu-154 flying from Xian to Guangzhou crashed, killing all 160 people on board and ranking as China’s worst air disaster, according to the Aviation Safety Network.
Boeing 737-800 model
The plane that suffered the accident was a Boeing 737-800. This is the most common version of Boeing jets currently in service, and is the flagship of many airline fleets.
There are 4,502 of the 737-800s in service worldwide, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium, making it by far the most common Boeing aircraft in service.
It is the most used aircraft model in the United States, where there are 795 in service, as well as in China, which has 1,177 in service. The model is still the second most used aircraft in the world, behind only the A320 manufactured by Airbus.
The 737-800 is an older model, which has recently been replaced by the 737 Max.
Source: CNN Brasil
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