The pilot of the plane that crashed in southern China with 132 people on board was a veteran in the field, with more than 6,000 hours of flight time. His copilot was even more experienced, having flown since the early days of the post-Mao Zedong era, training in everything from Soviet-style biplanes to newer Boeing jets.
Together, the men operating Flight 5735 had more than 39,000 hours of experience, the equivalent of four and a half years nonstop in the cabin. This adds to the mystery of why the plane plunged from a cruising altitude of 29,000 feet (8.7 km) over a wooded mountain on Monday.
How they flew the Boeing 737 will be closely scrutinized as investigators seek to explain what was likely China’s worst air disaster in more than a decade. Experts said it was unlikely anyone survived the crash.
On Thursday, rescuers said they found engine parts, part of a wing and other “important debris” as they scoured the mountainside in Guangxi for a fourth day.
A 1.2-meter-long wreckage, possibly from the plane, was found more than 10 kilometers from the main crash site, said Zheng Xi, commander-in-chief of the Guangxi Fire Department. As a result, search teams will expand the area they are searching, he added.
At the main crash site, a state broadcaster showed workers shoveling around a large wreckage that the reporter described as a wing, which had part of the China Eastern Airlines logo and was dangling from a steep, barren slope surrounded by bamboo groves. now flattened. Heavy rains made the roads slippery and filled the land with mud puddles.
The day before, workers had found a black box, possibly the cockpit voice recorder, which could provide investigators with crucial details. Authorities said it was damaged, but its memory unit is relatively intact. The plane’s second black box, which records flight data, has yet to be recovered.
Officials from China Eastern described the crew as having no health problems or flaws in their records. Its previous performance was “very good,” Sun Shiying, president of China Eastern Airlines’ Yunnan branch, said Wednesday. When contacted by phone, an airline representative declined to answer further questions about the crew.
China Eastern did not identify the crew, but state-run newspaper Ta Kung Pao and Hong Kong’s Phoenix magazine identified the pilot as Yang Hongda and the first co-pilot as Zhang Zhengping.
Zhang, born in 1963, was one of China’s most experienced pilots, having started flying as a teenager in Yunnan Province in the early 1980s, according to a 2018 profile in CAAC News, the Civil Aviation Administration’s newspaper. China. He was selected from thousands who applied to the aviation school. There, he trained on a copy of a Soviet model biplane.
Later, after joining China Yunnan Airlines, he flew the Antonov An-24s, a turboprop model that was once common in Chinese commercial aviation, according to the article. After China Yunnan bought its first Boeing jets, Zhang traveled to Seattle, US, in 1988 to train on the 737-300, the paper said. He later learned to fly the Boeing 767 wide-body aircraft. Over the course of his career as a commercial pilot in China Yunnan, which later merged with China Eastern, Zhang has flown four different aircraft models and accumulated 31,769 hours of flying experience.
“At China Eastern Airlines Yunnan, he is one of the few veteran pilots, mentor to young captains and witness to the rapid growth of Yunnan’s aviation industry since the beginning of the era of reform and opening up 40 years ago,” the newspaper said, referring to to the reforms adopted in China after the Mao era.
The airline often pairs young pilots with older ones, and Zhang has mentored more than 100, CAAC News said. Yang was one of them. The son of a China Eastern pilot, Yang steadily progressed through the company, Phoenix magazine said. He began flying 737 models in 2018, was 32 years old and had a daughter who had just celebrated her first birthday, the Southern Weekly reported.
In addition to Zhang and Yang, a second copilot with 556 hours of experience was on the plane. All three had valid health certificates and met all other requirements to fly, the airline said. His “family conditions were stable,” Sun said. Experts said investigating the accident, which involved a sudden dip from cruising altitude in good weather, would require a closer look at the aircraft and pilots, including the possibility that the plane was deliberately shot down. But they emphasized that the cause is far from determined.
“Of course, an intentional shootdown is always a part of any investigation, especially with this particular flight profile,” said Hassan Shahidi, CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation, a nonprofit created after World War II to promote aviation safety. But he cautioned that it was “premature to opt for any possibility.”
Steven Marks, a Miami attorney who specializes in lawsuits against Boeing and Airbus alleging equipment failures, said he was skeptical that a pilot caused the accident intentionally, particularly given the likelihood that others would have intervened.
“If the captain wanted to commit suicide, he would have to dominate the other crew,” Marks said.
