A China Eastern Airlines Boeing-737 crashed on Monday March 21 in southwestern China, taking with it 132 passengers, of whom it is not yet known whether they survived. The American aircraft manufacturer Boeing, which is in its third accident, will be at the heart of the investigation which will have to determine who is responsible for the crash.
The tragedy occurred in the Guangxi region, near the city of Wuzhou. The Boeing 737, which was on a Chinese domestic flight, fell more than 7,600 meters in three minutes… Before crashing around 2:20 p.m. on Monday March 21, taking with it the 132 passengers who had been on board the plane. plane and all known to be Chinese nationals, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said. It is not known, however, if they were killed instantly or if they are only missing for the moment, knowing that no survivors have been found. By crashing, it caused a fire in the assembly, the extent of which is unknown. The causes and circumstances of the accident are still not indicated by the authorities. However, the site of the accident was cordoned off by the police and the emergency services are looking for the missing on March 22, while the Civil Aviation Administration of China launched an emergency procedure. While on television on March 21, Xi Jinping said he was “shocked” by the tragedy, an investigation will be launched to determine who is responsible for the crash.
In a press release addressed to the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the carrier China Eastern Airlines pays “a saddened tribute to the passengers and crew members who died in the accident”, without specifying the number. According to local media, the flight in question, China Eastern Airlines MU 5735, took off from the southwest China metropolis of Kunming at 1:11 p.m. local time, which is 6 a.m. Paris. His destination was Guangzhou, which is 1,300 km southeast of the country, where he was due to land at 1:11 p.m. local time. The tragedy seems to have occurred around 2 p.m., since it was at 2:02 p.m. local time that the connection was partially lost with the plane, and at 2:22 p.m. that the last data is plotted on the monitoring sites. These last sites indicate a descent of the aircraft from its cruising altitude of 9000 m. On the Flashradar site in particular, we see that the plane lost 21,250 feet, or 6,447 km in the space of a few seconds, before disappearing from the radar screens, then climbing back up briefly… And falling 1,410 meters again. , to end up at 983 meters at 2:22 p.m., last minute traceable by the data, which cannot correspond to a simple stall. For Jean-Paul Troadec, former director of the Civil Aviation Safety Investigation and Analysis Bureau (BEA), although it is “far too early” to draw conclusions, it is however obvious that the machine had a very “unusual behavior before the accident”, as he confides to The Dispatch.
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.
The difficulties of the American group Boeing
An investigation will be launched to clarify the circumstances of the accident, but also to establish who is at fault: the Boeing group because of a design or manufacturing defect in the aircraft, or the China Eastern company for a problem maintenance and pilot behavior? The American aircraft manufacturer is already encountering great financial difficulties, its shares having lost 3.6% on Wall Street on the day of the accident, and its remuneration coming in part from China, Chinese orders representing 25% of world sales (550 devices this year) of the 737 model max. On the verge of resuming its deliveries of the 737 Max, the American aircraft manufacturer thus suffered a new blow. With the other two crashes in its history and the context of the health crisis, the slowdown in its profits will be significant. All the more so in a period of trade political tensions between China and the United States, revived, as explained by The worldby the Chinese refusal to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine.