A Boeing-737 with 132 people on board crashed in southern China on Monday. Here is the point on this accident which could prove to be the deadliest since 1994.
Facts
China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735 took off shortly after 1 p.m. local time (6 a.m. in France) from the metropolis of Kunming (southwest). His destination was Canton, some 1,300 km away. But the aircraft “lost contact over the city of Wuzhou” in the mountainous region of Guangxi, the Chinese Civil Aircraft Administration (CAAC) said without providing a casualty toll. “It is confirmed that this flight crashed,” she added in a brief statement, adding that she had dispatched “a task force” to the scene. The aircraft was carrying 123 passengers and 9 crew members.
The plane “completely fell to pieces” after crashing into a mountainside, a local resident told local media. The accident “caused a fire” in the mountain, for its part indicated the public television CCTV. Rescuers extinguished the flames.
What assumptions?
According to the specialized site FlightRadar24, the aircraft lost nearly 26,000 feet (7.925 m) in the space of 3 minutes before disappearing from the radar screens after 2:22 p.m. local time (7:22 a.m. in Paris). According to Jean-Paul Troadec, former director of the Civil Aviation Safety Investigation and Analysis Bureau (BEA), “it’s very unusual, a simple stall would not give this kind of profile at all”.
The expert considers that in normal times, when “we stall at high altitude (…) the pilot nose dives a little to regain speed, and the plane slowly resumes its flight. These are maneuvers that we learn in the first hours of flying lessons. A stall at high altitude, it catches up very very well. There, it is something else. »
According to Jean-Paul Troadec, it was “either the autopilot which would have commanded a sudden descent of the aircraft and which would not have been caught by the crew, which seems a bit surprising given the duration of the fall, three minutes, it could also be an action by the crew, but nothing more can be said. »
The reactions
Chinese President Xi Jinping said he was “shocked” after the crash, state broadcaster CCTV reported. In an unusual hot reaction, the strong man from Beijing called for “determining the causes of the accident as soon as possible”, indicated the chain.
In a statement, the airline, China Eastern Airlines, “paid tribute” to the “dead” of the disaster. From the United States, Boeing said it was trying “to gather more information”. The automaker’s shares were down at the open on Wall Street.
According to the financial media Yicai, China Eastern decided without waiting for the results of the investigation to suspend all its 737-800s from Tuesday. The company could not be reached to comment on this information.
The previous ones
Plane accidents are relatively rare in China, a country where air traffic has grown considerably in recent decades and safety measures are generally strict.
The last major accident in the country dates back to August 2010. A flight from the Chinese company Henan Airlines then crashed in the northeast of the country and killed around 40 people.
The heaviest toll for a commercial flight dates back to 1994. A China Northwest Airlines Tupolev 154 crashed shortly after takeoff from Xi’an (north), killing all 160 people on board.
Monday’s air disaster is another blow for Boeing in China. In March 2019, the country was the very first in the world to order its companies to suspend flights of 737 MAX aircraft for security reasons. The announcement followed two accidents in a few months abroad, which had killed 346 people.
VIDEO. China: After falling 9,000 meters, a plane crashes with 132 people on board
Nearly three years after these setbacks, the Chinese regulator finally lifted its flight ban for the Boeing 737 MAX last December. It is not yet known whether these aircraft have resumed commercial flights in China again.
The regulator notably conditioned the return of the 737 MAX in Chinese skies to technical modifications to the planes, in order to guarantee flight safety. China was the last major country to lift the ban on the aircraft.