The Fatal Plane Crash in China and what this Means for Boeing

Written by Vivian Cai W’24; Edited by Talia Sacks W’24

What caused the crash?

The flight crashed about an hour and seven minutes into its journey into Guangzhou. The plane was at an altitude of 29,100 feet and was cruising for about 12 minutes when its nose suddenly angled toward the ground and dropped more than 20,000 feet in a matter of minutes. After seeing this sharp altitude drop, air-traffic controllers attempted several times to get in contact with the jet, but no response.

Plane crashes usually occur during take-off or landing. It is very rare for crashes to happen during cruising, which is what happened here. Although no one has any information on what caused the crash, many Boeing engineers and air-safety investigators from the U.S. were granted special access by the Chinese government to come for investigation. Plane investigations usually take months or years to come to a conclusion. People must locate debris, analyze flight-data, and listen to voice recordings from the cockpit through what is called a “black box”. For this particular crash, both black boxes were located and are still intact. Hopefully, there will be more information on the cause of the crash soon. 


Who was on the flight?

A potential factor of the crash would be an inexperienced captain crew. However, this particular flight had one of the “most experienced commercial pilots in China”, first officer Zhang Zhengping. Mr. Zhang was one of the first trained commercial aircraft pilots after the post-Mao reform era. Since 2020, Mr. Zhang had more than 30,000 hours of flying time and had trained more than 100 captains for the airline, including the young co-pilot onboard, Yang Honda. 

Some of the passengers on flight included the CFO of an entertainment and titanium mining company, Dinglong Culture Co, and several accountants from a large company in Shanghai. 

What this means for Boeing

The plane that crashed was a 7-year-old Boeing 737-800. This model plane has over 4,200 units in service around the world and is the most popular out of the Boeing 737 family. This family of jets has a superior safety record in comparison with other commercial planes, with only fatal accidents happening 0.09 times per one million departures. After this accident, China Eastern Airlines has grounded the rest of their Boeing 737-800 planes, although others continue to use them. 

This fatal accident follows two other major crashes that happened in 2018 and 2019. Both accidents, killing a total of 346 people, were on Boeing 737 MAX planes. These two fatal crashes resulted in almost all airlines grounding their Boeing 737 MAX planes. 

Much of Boeing’s success in the aviation industry comes from being able to produce reliable planes. Therefore, after these two crashes, which were only within five months of each other, caused the company to suffer. The crash in China may cause the face of Boeing and the reliability of their planes to waver. Airlines might turn to other aviation companies and even people might not feel comfortable sitting in a Boeing 737 anymore. 

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