New York (AFP) – A report into a fatal airline crash by an independent US government investigative agency has renewed speculation that one of China’s biggest aviation disasters was deliberate. China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735 mysteriously plunged into a mountainside in southern China in March 2022, killing 132 people on board.
The report, compiled by the US National Transportation Safety Board in July 2022, was posted on the agency’s website last week following a public records request, an NTSB spokesman said. Findings from the flight data recorder showed that “while cruising at 29,000 ft, the fuel switches on both engines moved from the run position to the cutoff position.” “Engine speeds decreased after the fuel switch movement,” the report said.
US media reports cite aviation experts as saying fuel switches in a Boeing 737 lock into position, making it improbable they were switched off accidentally. Some experts cited by US media also say the flight data suggested a struggle within the cockpit and that fuel supply could have been cut off deliberately by a pilot or crew member or someone who broke into the cockpit.
The NTSB report contained pictures of impact-damaged circuit boards and gave a detailed account of the final moments of the flight before the crash. It did not, however, contain transcripts of voice recordings from the cockpit. Nor did it comment on the root cause of the calamity.
In line with international standards, the NTSB participates in investigations of crashes outside the United States if they involve a US-registered or designed aircraft. But the foreign state where the accident took place “is responsible for the investigation and controls the release of all information regarding the investigation,” the NTSB says on its website.
In this case, that responsibility falls to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), which has yet to issue a final report. CAAC last released a progress report on the crash in March 2024, in which authorities said there were no abnormalities in the aircraft’s engines before takeoff. They added that the crew had passed pre-flight health checks, and that there were “no abnormalities” observed in radio communications and air traffic control before the incident.
The UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) requires countries investigating plane crashes to publish updated reports every year. The CAAC did not publicly release a progress report on the crash anniversaries in 2025 and 2026.
© 2024 AFP
