China Eastern Airlines resumes Boeing 737-800 flights one month after fatal crash

China Eastern flight MU5843 departed the southwestern city of Kunming at 09:58 local time and landed in Chengdu at 11:03. The three-year-old Boeing 737-800 later departed Chengdu, also in southwest China, at 13:02 and returned to Kunming, as shown on the tracking website Flightradar24.com.

On 21 March, China Eastern flight MU5735 was en route from Kunming to Guangzhou when it nosedived into a mountainside, disintegrating on impact and killing all 132 people on board. The cause of the disaster, China’s deadliest plane crash in more than 30 years, is not yet known.

The accident caused China Eastern to ground its entire fleet of 223 Boeing 737-800 aircraft for safety checks, as aviation authorities vowed an extensive two-week inspection of the country’s vast passenger fleet.

It was a major setback for the return of Boeing’s 737 MAX to China, the last big market where the American planemaker is still awaiting approval to fly following crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed a combined 346 people in 2018 and 2019.

China has retrieved both black boxes from the downed jet, which are currently being analysed at an American lab with the help of investigators from the United States government. Beijing announced that a preliminary investigation report would be completed within 30 days of the crash.