CAAC: No abnormality in ill-fated flight
Print Edition
No abnormality has been found pertaining to the crew, aircraft, cargo, flying route, equipment or weather on the ill-fated China Eastern flight MU5735 that crashed in south China last month, according to the initial investigation report issued yesterday.
Data restoration and analysis are still ongoing on the two black box recorders, which were severely damaged during the crash, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China. In a statement, the CAAC did not make public any information from the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder that were sent to Washington for analysis.
“The technical investigation team will focus on wreckage recognition, classification and inspection, along with flying data analysis as well as necessary experiments and verification, for the cause of the accident,” it announced.
According to the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation, investigators will submit a preliminary investigation report to the International Civil Aviation Organization, in both Chinese and English, within 30 days.
The CAAC said the flight crew were qualified, the jet was properly maintained, the weather was fine, and no dangerous goods were on the plane before the crash.
The initial report normally only has the facts of the accident, with no analysis or conclusions on the cause of the accident.
The flight was en route from Kunming in southwest China’s Yunnan Province to Guangzhou in southern Guangdong Province when it crashed in Tengxian County of Wuzhou City in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on March 21.
Flight MU5735 had 123 passengers on board along with nine crew — three pilots, five flight attendants and a security guard. All 132 people on board were killed.
Rescuers found the two black box recorders within a week after the accident and identified the DNA of all victims within eight days.
According to the CAAC report, the Boeing aircraft took off from Kunming Changshui International Airport at 1:16pm and ascended to the cruise altitude of 8,900 meters at 1:27pm.
At 2:17pm, it entered the jurisdiction of the Guangzhou air traffic controller, which received a warning of “altitude deviation” on radar at 2:20pm.
The ATC then called the pilots but received no answer.
The last record of the aircraft on the radar showed it was flying at an altitude of 3,380 meters with a speed of 1,010 kilometers per hour at 2:21pm, when its signal disappeared shortly afterward.
A 45-square-meter and 2.7-meter-deep pit was found in the valley of Molang Village in the county’s Langnan Town, which was later confirmed as the main crash site.
The forest and plants nearby were burnt.
The right winglet of the plane was found about 12 kilometers from the main crash site. Other key wreckage found near the site included the horizontal stabilizer, vertical stabilizer, left and right engines, left and right wings, fuselage parts, landing gear and cockpit.
The pilots, flight attendants and repairers were qualified, with the aircraft boasting an airworthiness certificate and latest maintenance.
No malfunction, dangerous cargo or inclement weather was reported. The navigation and monitoring system along the flying route also operated normally.
Before the aircraft deviated from its normal altitude, the air-ground communications were normal. The last communication was made at 2:16pm, according to the report.
Chinese aviation expert Li Xiaojin said that the preliminary findings showed there was no issue with the flight procedures, which meant data from the black boxes would be key to determining the cause of the crash.
“It would at least take a year for them to conclude the investigation,” he pointed out while speaking to Xinhua news agency.
The CAAC’s statement said that it had completed the preliminary report, which according to international rules must be filed to United Nations aviation agency ICAO within 30 days, but does not need to be released publicly.
China Eastern, which grounded its entire fleet of 223 Boeing 737-800 planes after the crash, resumed commercial flights using the aircraft type on Sunday.
The CAAC statement did not point to any technical recommendations regarding the model.
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