Tragedy in the Skies

On March 21, 2022, the domestic China Eastern Airlines Flight 5735 was going from Kunming to Guangzhou. The plane was a seven year old Boeing 737-800 NG, cruising at an altitude of 29,100 feet. At 2:20 pm, however, it suddenly dropped over 20,000 feet in under a minute, crashing into a remote hillside full of bamboo and banana trees and killed all 132 people on the plane. The black box has been recovered, but due to the tremendous impact of the crash, it is possible that some of the data has been lost. The audio is also yet to be released.

China Eastern has kept a third of their planes on ground, preventing 223 Boeing 737-800 from flying for safety checks. Investigations are still being concluded, but experts are baffled by the evidence. Some eyewitnesses reported seeing black smoke while others described white smoke from the plane. Black smoke would mean burning fuel but white smoke constitutes leaking fuel, so the eye-witnesses reports are inconsistent. Furthermore, no explosive residue has been found in the debris. What experts find most interesting is the sudden dive the plane made. Based on the model of the plane, extreme pressure is required on the horizontal stabilizers for a nosedive to happen. Therefore, the crash was almost certainly caused by a technical malfunction or the pilot’s actions.

Pilot suicide, although quite rare, has been a subject of concern for the past few years. In 2015, the co-pilot of the Germanwings Flight 9525 deliberately crashed into the Alps and killed all 150 people on board. He had a history of depression and had visited several doctors prior to the incident. Several of these doctors had reported him unfit to work, yet the aircraft company was unaware of these notes. This has sparked controversy over workers’ private health information. Especially in cases regarding services that impact multiple people such as transpotation companies, people are pushing for more thorough investigations into workers’ backgrounds and mental health.

The direct cause of the crash is yet to be confirmed, but investigators expect results to be released by the end of April.