The National Transportation Safety Board already has assigned a senior air safety inspector to probe the occurrence. But the mysterious crash of China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735 has everyone baffled.
The deadly crash of a Boeing 737 operated by China Eastern Airlines on Monday has overwhelmed the US aviation sector (aka Boeing), just a year since the plane manufacturing company had ultimately managed to move past the catastrophic deployment of the 737 MAX 8, which killed hundreds of people in two fatal crashes, one in Ethiopia and the other in Indonesia, due to a design error.
The MAX 8 was created by “clowns who were overseen by monkeys” according to one internal Boeing mail. The accidents sparked international groundings and a comprehensive inquiry, which uncovered that the FAA had basically relinquished its supervisory responsibilities.
As though the crash was still not humiliating enough, video of the event, which shows the plane practically plummeting out of the sky, has been viewed by thousands, if not millions, of individuals, most of whom are eagerly awaiting explanations.
Chinese airlines have not purchased any additional Boeing airplanes in years, and Monday’s tragedy increases the prospect of Boeing being blacklisted from the world’s second-largest air transport industry.
Shortly after the incident, local Chinese media reported that the accident was prompted by an electrical breakdown, however it is uncertain if this is really true. At this point, very little has been revealed for certainty about the situation encompassing the tragedy (and examining the information from the plane’s “black box” which must be collected from the scene of the crash in a hilly part of Guangxi Province, will require experts days, if not weeks).
However, as the inquiry commences, the sole certainty is that China’s first commercial airline tragedy in a decade is exceedingly rare in the context of plane crashes. Why? Because, as shown in the footage below, the plane literally plunged out from the sky, with the plane’s nose falling at an unusual inclination.
According to experts quoted by Bloomberg, this gives the incident an extremely unusual profile.
While there have been a handful of crashes in which an airliner plunged from cruising altitude, few, if any, fit the extreme profile of the Boeing Co. 737-800 as it pointed steeply toward the ground, according to veteran crash investigators and previous accident reports.
“It’s an odd profile,” said John Cox, an aviation safety consultant and former 737 pilot. “It’s hard to get the airplane to do this.”
Try taking a look at the plane’s angle in the accident footage that has been spreading on social media.
The angle of descent, which was basically directly down, astounded aviation experts…
According to information from flight-tracking systems, the aircraft moved from cruising altitude to disappearing from the sky in a little under 2 minutes.
The National Transportation Safety Board already has assigned a senior air safety inspector to probe the occurrence (though it is unknown how long it will take for US inspectors to be on site considering the pandemic-related travel limitations still in effect in China).
However, as the assessment gets underway, aviation specialists are already claiming that the crash video and the statistics provided above create more problems than they solve.
And while the rest of the world waits for more information, here’s what we understand thus far.
- Flight MU5735 was around 100 miles from its destination, traveling at an elevation of almost 29,000 feet, when it began plummeting at a much faster rate than usual. According to monitoring data gathered by Flightradar24, the aircraft began plummeting at more than 30,000 feet per minute inside of seconds, rather than steadily decreasing by a few thousand feet per minute.
- The plane descended 26,000 feet in one minute and 35 seconds, according to flight tracking statistics.
- The plane’s plummet appeared to come to a standstill for almost 10 seconds, and it rose momentarily before continuing the fall, adding an unexpected twist to the situation. “It’s very odd,” said Jeff Guzzetti, the former chief of the Federal Aviation Administration’s accident investigation division.
- While there are several instances for passenger planes dropping from cruising altitude, the majority of these occurrences differ significantly. After speed sensors froze up and pilots grew confused, Air France Flight 447, which collapsed in the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, 2009, fell significantly slower and more irregularly. That flight’s 228 passengers and crew members were all killed.
- A pilot aboard a Silk Air 737-300 transporting 104 people died in a similar incident on Dec. 19, 1997, when the plane crashed into a river in Indonesia, killing everybody on board. According to Indonesian authorities, the plane plummeted at a speed of more than 38,000 feet per minute, indicating that the pilot most probably wrecked the plane intentionally.
- Is that how it went down in this case? Well, it is a bit of a mystery. The 737-800, like most of the other jetliners, is intended to avoid diving at extreme angles. Forcing the jet to do so would almost certainly necessitate a heroic effort on the part of the pilot or an extremely uncommon malfunction.
- It is probable that the pilot had a heart attack or experienced another medical emergency, causing him to lean onto the control column and lower the nose.
Boeing CEO David Calhoun addressed a statement to all staff earlier this evening:
We are deeply saddened by the news of the accident involving a China Eastern Airlines 737-800 airplane. The thoughts of all of us at Boeing are with the passengers and crew members on Flight MU 5735, as well as their families and loved ones.
We have been in close communication with our customer and regulatory authorities since the accident, and have offered the full support of our technical experts to the investigation led by the Civil Aviation Administration of China.
I will keep you apprised of information about the accident as investigation protocols allow. In the meantime, trust that we will be doing everything we can to support our customer and the accident investigation during this difficult time, guided by our commitment to safety, transparency, and integrity at every step.
Dave
Answers will almost certainly be coming, although we expect they will be delayed due to the fact that the crash transpired in China. Though one aspect is certain: something went horribly wrong for the plane’s nose to descend at such an unnatural angle.
“You need something to hold the nose down,” said Benjamin Berman, a former NTSB investigator with 737 expertise.
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Were the 2 Chinese pilots vaccinated – the pilot flying the aircraft had a heart attack, he slumped forwards over the controls, putting the aircraft into a sudden dive and the relief pilot could not regain control before the aircraft went in – simple, easy, end of story – the red box and the black one should tell what happened if they survived the crash?
Among the 1,486 vaccinated people who died from COVID-19, almost 1,300 of them—87 percent—had received at least one dose of the CoronaVac vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac firm, a March 20 report showed.
The Epoch Times
That is it: ‘ It is probable that the pilot had a heart attack or experienced another medical emergency, causing him to lean onto the control column and lower the nose. ‘
Even though the plane was about 100 miles from the destination, wouldn’t it still have been on auto-pilot?
FLIGHT CONTROL: Boeing’s ‘Uninterruptible Autopilot System’, Drones & Remote Hijacking
https://21stcenturywire.com/2014/08/07/flight-control-boeings-uninterruptible-autopilot-system-drones-remote-hijacking/
If the pilot was wearing his seatbelt and lost consciousness, I’ll bet slouching forward onto the controls will take the plane out of autopilot and can cause a steep dive. If the co-pilot was not wearing his seat-belt, he would have floated up to the upper rear of the cockpit and been pinned there, since the plane was likely accerating as it fell. It says the plane leveled out for a moment and started to climb before descending again. If it leveled out suddenly the co-pilot would have been slammed to the floor and possibly injured or knocked unconscious. For the plane to level out like that the pilot would have maybe breifly regained consciousness and sat up before losing it again and falling back onto the controls. Another possibility is murder-suicide by one of the pilots. Poisoning doesn’t really make sense in this situation.
Why are there not video recordings of the cockpit at all ATC towers — physical on land evidence that commence recording automatically, from take-off to landing at destination? Such videos surely would go a long way to assist crash investigations, providing empirical evidence of what transpired in the cockpit, moment to moment, during a flight? Additional data of the flight can be added to the recording. Already it is said that the black box for MU5735 has been found, but it is quite badly damaged.