The aircraft that crashed in China on Monday morning (21) plummeted 7,856 meters in less than 2 minutes, show flight data released by Flightradar24, a website that monitors the movement of planes around the world, in an unusual fall trajectory. , in the opinion of experts.
The ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance by Broadcasting) data also shows that, seconds before the collision, when the plane was at 2,260 meters (7,425 feet), the aircraft managed to recover a little and climb to 2,620 meters (8,600 ft) before falling again, until the system stops recording altitude and the plane is less than 1 kilometer off the ground.
According to Flightradar24, at the final moment the plane was heading towards the ground at a speed of 567 km/h.
Video of what would be the moment of the fall, published by the local press, draws attention to the trajectory of the aircraft, almost perpendicular to the ground. Henrique Hacklaender, a commercial aviation pilot for 12 years and director of the National Aeronauts’ Union, says that this type of fall is not common.
He compares the path taken by the China Eastern flight with the fall path of Gol Flight 1907, in 2006, which also fell sharply, in just 63 seconds — at the time, however, the aircraft descended in a spiral. In that episode, the Brazilian vehicle was hit at 37,000 feet (11,300 meters) by another plane and shattered in midair, which explains the aggressive fall, says Hacklaender.
“It doesn’t seem to be the case now, because the pilot manages to recover a little bit of attitude, even if for a few seconds, and then he falls back. That’s why it doesn’t seem to have shattered in the air. It looks like a problem of lack of control of the aircraft” , says he, who remembers that air accidents are not caused by a single cause and that it is necessary to wait for the investigation of the case.
Former pilot Michel Treskin of the Aerotime website says the altitude recovery “shows that there was some control over the aircraft”. “It looks like someone tried to pull the aircraft out of the dive,” he told the portal.
Aviation safety specialist Lito Sousa, in turn, says that from the images released so far, it is not possible to know if there was any damage to the aircraft’s surfaces – wings and stabilizers – before the crash. Records from the impact site show the aircraft’s total destruction, but the black boxes, which record flight data and cockpit audio, must have survived, he says.
“The black boxes are essential to understand what happened. If it was a mechanical problem, we should see an inspection order published urgently. If that possibility is ruled out, the investigation follows the normal course until the story of that flight be built”, he says.
The US air safety agency, NTSB, will participate in the investigation because it is an aircraft manufactured in the United States. The vehicle was six years old, according to Flightradar 24.
Among the flight data released so far, it is noteworthy that in the first 2 km of descent there was no change in the aircraft’s heading – that is, the nose of the plane continues pointing in the same direction, says Lito. “This type of descent profile is very strange. Very few failures would cause such a descent”, he says, stating that it is now up to the investigation to find out what happened.
Li Xiaojin, a Chinese aviation expert, told Reuters news agency that “it is very difficult to understand what happened” because, “normally, the plane is on autopilot in the cruise phase”, the stage of the flight in which the vehicle is at the highest point, after finishing the ascent and before the descent. According to the agency, Boeing data points out that only 13% of air accidents between 2011 and 2020 occurred while aircraft were in this phase – most of them happen on final approach and landing.
China Eastern’s Boeing 737-800 crashed with 132 people on board in a mountainous region in southern China, during a domestic flight around 2 pm on Monday, local time, still early in the morning in Brazil. The flight had left Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, towards Guanzhou, capital of Guangdong, on the border with Hong Kong, when it crashed near Wuzhou.
According to the Chinese state press, after the accident the airline suspended the operation of the fleet of 109 Boeing 737-800s that it owns. The model, which has a good safety record, succeeded the 737 MAX, which was blocked from operation after fatal accidents in Indonesia and Ethiopia.
China’s last fatal air crash involving large aircraft occurred in 2010, when 44 of the 96 people aboard a Henan Airlines Embraer E-190 died after the aircraft crashed as it approached Yichun Airport in the southeast of the country.
