It is still not finally clear how the plane crashed in March.
(Photo: AP)
Frankfurt Memories of the crash of Germanwings flight 9525 in the French Alps in March 2015 are brought back to life: was the Boeing 737-800 of the China Eastern airline also intentionally crashed a few weeks ago? A report by the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday suggests so. The US newspaper refers to the corresponding findings of the accident investigators.
The China Eastern Airlines plane went down near the metropolis of Guangzhou on March 21. All 132 occupants died in the accident. According to the US newspaper, commands were deliberately entered into the controls that steered the plane steeply towards the ground.
The newspaper relies on sources that are familiar with the preliminary findings of the EU investigators. The newspaper also quotes an anonymous person as saying: “The plane did what it was told by someone in the cockpit.”
The media report has not yet been confirmed. Given the human tragedy, it should be viewed with some caution. However, there are some indications that the US newspaper actually has concrete knowledge about the cause of the crash.
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First: It may be irritating that the newspaper quotes the EU investigators in a crash in China. But in such an incident, accident experts from all over the world are called in. This is stipulated in the International Air Transport Convention. It was also a US newspaper that was the first to report the suicide of the Germanwings pilot in 2015. While EU authorities tend to be extremely secretive when it comes to accidents, that does not appear to be the case in the US.
Second, when reports of a deliberate crash of the China Eastern plane first surfaced a few weeks ago, Chinese authorities were quick to deny them, calling them “false information.” Now there is no such denial – at least so far. The aviation authority CAAC is silent. Only the party-affiliated newspaper “Global Times” writes that the investigators of the CAAC together with the US Transportation Safety Authority (NTSB) did not give any relevant information from the investigation to the media.
The course of the flight is very unusual
Third: The course of the accident can hardly be explained otherwise than by deliberate control of the jet. Flight 5735 departed Kunming at 1:16 p.m. local time. At first everything went according to plan, at around 2:20 p.m. the plane was about to start its approach to Guangzhou. Then, in just two and a half minutes, the jet dropped to 7,425 feet (about 2.3 kilometers), a violent descent. The machine caught itself briefly and climbed again for a few seconds to 8600 feet. After that, in just 20 seconds, it dropped to 3225 feet, the last recorded altitude.
>>Read about this: Wreckage found on flight MU 5735 raises new questions
In principle, technical defects can be the cause of such a flight history. However, even passenger planes that have lost all their engines are able to stay in the air longer. Another possible explanation: There were problems with the aircraft structure, such as damage to the fuselage or the loss of important controls. However, none of this can be seen on videos showing the crash from a greater distance.
In a first interim report on April 20, the Chinese aviation authority CAAC again pointed out that flight 5735 had good general conditions. Pilots and cabin crew had the necessary qualifications and certificates, and there were no reports of technical problems with the aircraft. The weather forecast for the area was also good at the time.
The plane itself was just under seven years old. The Boeing 737 NG is considered one of the most reliable short and medium-haul jets. Around 7000 copies are in use worldwide.
Whether an intentional crash is actually the cause and who caused it – one of the pilots or a stranger who got into the cockpit – will probably only be clarified with the final report. Then the voice recorder should also be evaluated, which gives information about what happened in the cockpit in the last few minutes.
More: Flight MU 5735: A crash full of mysteries