The China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737 crashed on Monday March 21 in southwest China. It was carrying 133 people, of whom it is not known whether they survived. If public television (CCTV) indicates that he “caused a fire” in a mountain, for the time being, no precise assessment is yet available.
[Mis à jour le 21 mars à 11h53] The drama happened in the Guangxi region, near the city of Wuzhou. The Boeing 737 which was on a Chinese domestic flight crashed on Monday March 21, without it being known for the time being whether its 133 passengers and 9 crew members got away with it, CCTV not having yet provided a report, and China Eastern Airlines did not comment when contacted by Agence France-Presse. By crashing, it caused a fire in the assembly, the extent of which is also unknown. State media People’s Daily, however, says “rescue work” is underway. According to local media, the flight in question, China Eastern Airlines MU 5735, took off from the metropolis of Kunming, located southwest of the China, at 1 p.m. local time (approximately), which is 6 a.m. in Paris. His destination was Canton, which is 1300 km to the south-east of the country. The flight monitoring sites, if they do not currently present detailed monitoring of this crash, indicate a descent of the aircraft from its cruising altitude.
Entering service in June 2015, the 737-800 New Generation (NG) is the most popular single-aisle medium-haul aircraft in the world. Indeed, 5000 of its copies are currently operational, including 25% of them in China. Equipped with 110 to 210 seats depending on size, this aircraft has a range of 5700 km. The flight that crashed on March 21 was that of the renowned company China Eastern: with Air China and China Southern, it is on the podium of the largest Chinese companies. She is particularly well known in France since she has been a shareholder of the Air France-KLM group since 2017, in which she owns nearly 10% of the capital. This contract was signed after years of commercial relations with Air France. Luckily for Boeing, this crashed 737-800 NG model predates the infamous 737 Max.
The latest air accident in the country is that of the Henan Airlines airliner disaster of August 2010. It had missed its landing which was to take place in Yichun, in the northeast of China , resulting in the death of 42 people. A year earlier, in November 2009, the Avient Aviation company’s MD-11F plane crashed in Shanghai, killing 3 people. We also remember the crash of the Canadair CRJ-200LR of the company China Yunnan Airlines in Baotou in November 2004. The most striking crash of the 21st century was that of the MD-82, of the company China Northern Airlines, causing the death of the all 112 passengers.
This crash deals a new blow to the American group Boeing, which at the end of December obtained the agreement in principle from the Chinese authorities for the return to service of the 737 Max aircraft banned from flying in China since March 2020. This resumption of flights, which was also under subject to many conditions, did not apply to commercial flights. Why this ban? The 737 max are known for the crashes of the Lion Air 610 in the Java Sea and the Ethiopian Airlines 302 near Addis Ababa, which occurred in October 2018 (with 189 fatalities) and March 2019 (with 157 fatalities) respectively. Safety and flight control problems having already been detected on these planes, China banned their circulation immediately after the Ethiopian Airlines crash, followed by Europe and the United States. The lifting of the Chinese ban was the latest, illustrating the precautions of Chinese aviation vis-à-vis these models.