China Eastern Airlines B738 crashes in southern China

[Airband]

Passenger plane crashes in southern China

China Eastern Airlines flight with 132 people on board crashes in mountain range in Guangxi

Mon Mar 21, 2022 - Financial Times

A passenger flight with 132 people on board has crashed in southern China, in what threatens to be the country’s worst air disasters in recent years.

China Eastern Airlines’ flight MU5735 crashed in a mountain range in Guangxi an hour after take-off, according to multiple state media reports. The flight was travelling from Kunming to Guangzhou.

No information on casualties or the cause of the crash was immediately available.

Data from Flightradar24 showed the six-year-old plane travelling at 29,100 feet before it began to rapidly lose speed and altitude.

The flight was carrying 123 passengers and nine crew members, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China. The aviation regulator said it had activated its emergency response measures and was sending a team to the crash site.

The fire department in Wuzhou, where the plane went down, said the plane crashed in a remote mountainous area and 450 firefighters were heading to the scene of the accident, according to state media.

Videos on social media showed smoke billowing from a mountain in the area. The images could not be verified by the Financial Times.

Flight tracking websites show the route was being flown by a Boeing 737-800.

Boeing and China Eastern did not immediately respond to questions.

The crash could be one of China’s worst aviation disasters in two decades after a succession of accidents in the 1990s, which officials blamed on the rapid growth of the aviation industry without strict regulatory oversight.

Over the past two decades, China has suffered fewer accidents after the country upgraded its fleet and introduced tighter government controls and regulatory scrutiny.

The Boeing 737-800 plane that crashed in China differs from the larger Max series which crashed in Indonesia and Ethiopia within six months, killing a combined 346 people.

[Kip Powick]

Go here to see a very startling TV photo

 

http://www.avherald.com/h?article=4f64be2f&opt=0

 

 

[Seeker]

Short, unverified and distressing video purported to be the aircraft in a dive shortly before the crash and the ensuing fire.

My prayers for the families, crew and victims.

 

[Guest1]

Reuters Graphics

China Eastern said the cause of the crash, in which the plane descended at 31,000 feet a minute according to flight tracking website FlightRadar24, was under investigation.

 

China Eastern grounded its fleet of 737-800 planes after the crash, state media reported. China Eastern has 109 of the aircraft in its fleet, according to FlightRadar24.

[J.O.]

Reports coming from the scene suggest parts of the tail were found a fair distance from the main wreckage.

[st27]

At a rate of descent of 31000 fpm, the tail probably was ripped off!

[Kip Powick]

Small debris field.....looks like vertical impact

[conehead]

Apparently the CVR has been recovered.

[Jaydee]

Speculation it’s a human event, not a technical one. 
 

Doomed China plane crashed after 'human activity' killing 132, chilling theory says

Horrifying footage shows the aircraft nosediving to the ground - with one aviation expert saying a technical fault would not have caused such a sudden and rapid manoeuvre

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/china-plane-crash-doomed-flight-26527458

[UpperDeck]

From the sidelines.....if there was structural failure involving the tail assembly which would I understand result in uncontrolled rapid descent.....how could the aircraft level and even slightly climb at Fl 9500 (+/-) according to Flight Radar?

After seconds, the rapid descent resumed.

[Rich Pulman]

8 minutes ago, UpperDeck said:

From the sidelines.....if there was structural failure involving the tail assembly which would I understand result in uncontrolled rapid descent.....how could the aircraft level and even slightly climb at Fl 9500 (+/-) according to Flight Radar?

After seconds, the rapid descent resumed.

If there wasn’t a structural failure before the reversal, there certainly may have been as a result of it. If the vertical speed numbers are accurate, they must have taken quite a G_z load to generate.

[Guest1]

 

[JL]

Maybe pointing out the obvious but to have an outer portion of wing with winglet still attached would indicate that section of wing was not attached to the aircraft at the time of impact. The distance of this wing portion from the main wreckage would roughly correlate to the altitude the failure occurred.

[UpperDeck]

1 hour ago, JL said:

Maybe pointing out the obvious but to have an outer portion of wing with winglet still attached would indicate that section of wing was not attached to the aircraft at the time of impact. The distance of this wing portion from the main wreckage would roughly correlate to the altitude the failure occurred.

Just wondering where you got the info as to the distance between the outer wing debris and main wreckage AND....what formula enables one to determine height of "failure" from that distance? Is it your opinion that "failure" occured at tod or at 9500 based on that calculation?

[JL]

No idea as to the distance. The image for the video update shows the wing but since there are two areas of reported wreckage, tough to say which location this is. As for the altitude of failure, the assumption is that if a wing separated at 30 000 feet it would be found further (downwind) from the wreckage than a separation at a much lower altitude (less time to be affected by wind drift).

[UpperDeck]

4 hours ago, JL said:

No idea as to the distance. The image for the video update shows the wing but since there are two areas of reported wreckage, tough to say which location this is. As for the altitude of failure, the assumption is that if a wing separated at 30 000 feet it would be found further (downwind) from the wreckage than a separation at a much lower altitude (less time to be affected by wind drift).

Thanks for the response, JL.

I think I misinterpreted your post to which I responded.

[JL]

No problem! It is always challenging to have good discussions around complex events with limited information. 

[J.O.]

I know it’s possible but the notion of a wing failure on a modern jetliner is pretty astounding.

Edited March 26, 2022 by J.O.

[Rich Pulman]

22 hours ago, J.O. said:

I know it’s possible but the notion of a wing failure on a modern jetliner is pretty astounding.

Flutter does bad things to airplanes.

[Kip Powick]

1) there is a short video of the CE aircraft in a vertical dive and although it is CCTV the aircraft appears not to be spinning and and it is impossible to see if it had wings on it.

2) there was an accident back in 2006 where an Embraer winglet took of 1/2  of a wing of a B-800 at high altitude, (first loss of a B-800), and the B-800 started down in an uncontrollable spin , broke up in the air and the main body of the aircraft was spinning when it hit the ground.

3) based on that short video clip of the recent crash there doesn't appear to be any spinning

4) it has been reported that there are traces of fire on some of found parts but that could have happened after impact...... unless there is a way to determine fire in the air.

5) I would find it hard to believe that a wing just broke off at altitude in this recent loss.

[Airband]

China Says It Has Found Second Black Box From Crashed Jet

Sat Mar 26, 2022 - Bloomberg News

China has retrieved the second black box from a jet that crashed March 21 after days of searching, as investigators try to work out what happened to the China Eastern Airlines flight carrying 132 people that plummeted from a cruise altitude.

The flight data recorder was found 1.5 meters (5 feet) beneath the soil at 9:20 a.m. on Sunday, state broadcaster CCTV reported. Investigators made the discovery on the east hill side of the crash site in rural southern China near the city of Wuzhou, it added. The official Xinhua News Agency also confirmed the box had been found. 

Investigators found the Boeing Co. 737-800 NG’s cockpit voice recorder on Wednesday and hope to use data from the two boxes to understand what went wrong on the flight. 

There are concerns about the state of the devices, given the plane appears to have plunged into the ground at high speed. Officials haven’t ruled out the possibility that the first box, which has been sent to Beijing for decoding, was badly damaged upon impact.  

Flight MU5735 from Kunming was cruising at about 29,000 feet (8,839 meters) and some 100 miles from its destination in Guangzhou, southern China, when it suddenly went into a steep descent. Over the next 1 minute and 35 seconds the plane lost altitude in a near vertical dive, which took it almost to the speed of sound. The plane briefly halted its descent for some 10 seconds, and even climbed a little, before plummeting again and slamming into a hillside. All 132 people on board, including nine crew members, were killed. 

China said Saturday it hadn’t found any evidence of explosive materials in the wreckage of the plane. Some 24,000 pieces of wreckage have been retrieved, officials said, and remains of 120 people had been identified.

[Jaydee]

10 hours ago, Airband said:

The plane briefly halted its descent for some 10 seconds, and even climbed a little, before plummeting again and slamming into a hillside.

If this is true, structural failure doesn’t seem to fit? For the sake of the profession, lets all pray this accident isn’t a repeat of German Wings 9525.

[Guest1]

video coverage from China has gone live again:

 

[Guest1]

 

[Kip Powick]

3 hours ago, Jaydee said:

If this is true, structural failure doesn’t seem to fit? For the sake of the profession, lets all pray this accident isn’t a repeat of German Wings 9525.

Perhaps we are all looking at is in error in the graph.......I find it hard to believe that an aircraft can, according to the graph, go vertical, recover for a few seconds, and then go vertical again........unless the "pullout" of the dive tore the wings off. The "G" loading would be off the clock on the pull out if that did happen..