A second co-pilot was also on the flight in total, the three had put in more than 39,000 hours of flying time.Ĭhina Eastern did not confirm the names of the crew members, but it said they had no health problems or faults on their records. The pilots were highly experienced.įlight 5735’s pilot, identified in news reports as Yang Hongda, was an industry veteran, and his first co-pilot, Zhang Zhengping, had even more experience, with a record dating to the 1980s. The widely used model has a good safety record, with 22 hull-losses, meaning the plane was damaged beyond economical repair, recorded over the past two decades, according to the Aviation Safety Network database. It is a narrow-body model, with nearly 5,000 built since it first went into production in the late 1990s. The 737-800 is part of Boeing’s Next Generation series. It was not a 737 Max, the model that was grounded worldwide after two fatal crashes in 20 that were caused by a faulty flight stabilizing system. The plane was a Boeing 737-800 that had flown for nearly seven years. The plane was a workhorse model with a history of reliable service. The plane was cruising at about 29,000 feet around 2:17 p.m., but a few minutes later air traffic controllers noticed the aircraft had suddenly lost altitude. on Monday and the first hour of its journey proceeded as normal, Zhu Tao, the director of aviation safety at the Civil Aviation Administration of China, said late Tuesday. Here’s a look at what we know so far: The plane plummeted more than 20,000 feet in about a minute.įlight 5735 took off shortly after 1 p.m. It was China’s deadliest air disaster since 1994, when a plane went down near the city of Xi’an, killing 160. Many questions remain about what led to the crash. On Sunday, officials said the second of the Boeing 737-800’s two flight recorders, or “black boxes,” had been found. Workers were still searching the crash site in the Guangxi region for debris. Officials said Saturday that 120 of the victims had been identified. “I didn’t see anyone who lived through it.”

“It was in fragments scattered all around,” Li Chenbin, a technician in the area, told the China News Service soon after the crash. On Saturday night, the Chinese authorities confirmed what had seemed all but certain for days: that none of the 132 people aboard had survived. Residents in the area described hearing a boom, apparently from the plane crashing into a hillside, and then seeing smoke from the fires it had ignited.

China Eastern Airlines Flight 5735 was making a short trip between two cities in southern China on Monday, cruising at an altitude of more than 29,000 feet, when it began a violent plunge toward the earth.

Crash & burn abigail roux