Flight data bolsters claim China Eastern plane was deliberately crashed in 2022

 

A rescuer ties a safety rope to a tree at the China Eastern Airlines crash site in Tengxian County, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, on March 26, 2022. 

Lu Boan/Xinhua/Getty Images

More than four years after a Boeing 737-800 passenger jet plunged 29,000 feet and crashed into a mountain in southern China, killing all 132 people on board, newly released data appears to indicate that someone in the cockpit may have intentionally switched off the fuel supply to the engines.

It was China’s deadliest air disaster in decades, but the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) has not addressed the crucial question of what had prompted the deadly nosedive of China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735 in March 2022 in remote Guangxi region.

Data released by the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in response to a freedom of information request, shows that the fuel switches to both engines were shut off simultaneously before the Boeing 737-800 jet dropped out of the sky.

The data was taken from the plane’s flight data recorder — one of two so-called “black boxes” that record all relevant operational information — which was recovered from the wreckage and sent to the NTSB’s laboratory in Washington DC for analysis (with the agency’s involvement stemming from Boeing being a US aircraft manufacturer).

“It was found that while cruising at 29,000 feet, the fuel switches on both engines moved from the run position to the cutoff position. Engine speeds decreased after the fuel switch movement,” the NTSB report said.

Fuel switches on commercial planes are physical controls that regulate the flow of fuel to the engines. On the 737, a pilot must pull the switch up before moving it from the run to cutoff position.

“This data clearly shows that the fuel switches were manually placed in the off position just prior to the crash,” said David Soucie, CNN aviation safety analyst.