Topline
All 132 passengers and crew on board the China Eastern Airlines flight that crashed in Guangxi province Monday have died, Chinese state media quoted an official from the Civil Aviation Administration of China as saying Saturday.
Rescuers work at the site of a China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800NG aircraft crash on March 22, … [+] 2022 in South China’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)
VCG via Getty Images
Key Facts
Hu Zhenjiang, deputy director of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, said search and rescue teams have identified the DNA of 120 victims of the crash, Reuters reports, citing Chinese state media.
No traces of explosives have been found at the crash site, said Zheng Xi, head of the Fire and Rescue Brigade of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, according to state news agency Xinhua.
Xi said crews were still searching for the aircraft’s second black box, which contains flight data recordings, state newspaper China Daily reports.
Reuters reports search teams had located an emergency location transmitter close to where the second black box was installed in the plane, signaling crews may be closer to finding the flight data recordings.
Search and rescue teams found the plane’s other “severely damaged” black box, containing the cockpit voice recorder, on Wednesday, and have sent it to experts in Beijing for examination.
Key Background
An hour into its flight from Kunming to Guangzhou on Monday, China Eastern Airlines Flight MU5735 suddenly plunged into a near-vertical drop, according to flight-tracking website FlightRadar24. The Boeing 737-800 dropped almost 22,000 feet in just over a minute before it crashed in mountains in southeastern China, baffling aviation experts. Search and rescue crews have been combing through the debris for days, and have located identification cards, wallets and bags from the 123 passengers and nine crew members aboard. China Eastern has temporarily grounded its 737-800 fleet to complete a “large-scale safety inspection.” The Boeing 737-800 is a popular aircraft with a good safety record, though the model has been involved in fatal crashes in the past.
Tangent
Boeing admitted full responsibility for the 2019 crash of the newest model of the aircraft, the 737 MAX, in Ethiopia in 2019, which followed a crash of the model in 2018. The pair of crashes killed all 346 onboard the planes. Investigators have attributed them to a faulty new flight control system on the planes.
Further Reading
Black Box Recovered From Crash Of Boeing 737 Jet Carrying 132 In China, State Broadcaster Says (Forbes)
No Survivors Found In Crash Of Boeing 737 Jet Carrying 132 In China, State Broadcaster Says (Forbes)
