An 18-second struggle broke out inside the cockpit of the doomed China Eastern Airlines jet moments before it slammed into a mountainside, according to recordings cited by an Italian newspaper.
Data recovered during the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation into the 2022 disaster suggests one person inside the cockpit was desperately trying to pull the aircraft up while another forced it down towards the ground.
The China Eastern flight crashed on March 21 of that year while travelling from Kunming to Guangzhou, killing all 132 passengers and crew on board.
Corriere della Sera, citing sources familiar with the investigation, said the plane’s cockpit voice recorder allegedly captured screams, rapid breathing and sounds resembling an argument or physical struggle in the final moments before the crash.
According to the newspaper, analysis of the aircraft’s flight data indicated that both engines were shut down before somebody pushed the control column forward, sending the jet into a steep nosedive.
The report said another person inside the cockpit then appeared to pull the controls in the opposite direction in an apparent attempt to regain control of the aircraft.
It remains unclear who was carrying out the actions. There were three people in the cockpit at the time. The captain, the first officer and an observing pilot.
The China Eastern flight crashed on March 21, 2022 while travelling from Kunming to Guangzhou, killing all 132 passengers and crew on board
Shocking CCTV footage emerged on social media showing the jet racing vertically towards the ground in the moments before the smash
Corriere reported that the struggle lasted around 18 seconds before the aircraft’s black box stopped recording flight data.
The claims emerged after newly released information from American investigators suggested both engines on the Boeing jet had been deliberately shut off before the crash.
In response to a public records request, the National Transportation Safety Board released a report detailing what was recovered from the aircraft’s flight data recorder.
The NTSB became involved in the Chinese investigation because the plane and engines were made by American companies and the US investigators are regarded as the world’s leading experts on analyzing black boxes after a crash.
The report offers the best explanation yet about what caused the crash and confirms news stories at the time suggesting the crew may have played a role after Chinese investigators said they did not immediately find a problem with the plane.
Aviation safety experts agree that the data shows the fuel to both engines was cut off and someone sent the plane into a nosedive and a 360-degree roll.
But it does not conclusively show exactly what happened because the Civil Aviation Administration of China has yet to release its final report more than four years later.
International standards call for investigators to strive to release their report by roughly a year after a crash. The NTSB report was released May 1.
By design the fuel levers in a 737 cannot be easily bumped or shut off inadvertently – someone has to pull them out to release them before they will move.
According to Corriere della Sera, analysis of the aircraft’s flight data indicated that both engines were shut down before somebody pushed the control column forward, sending the jet into a steep nosedive
Rescuers work at the site of a plane crash on March 24, 2022 in Tengxian County
John Cox, CEO of Safety Operating Systems, said the levers lock into place, so it’s likely that someone deliberately moved them both to the cutoff position.
The data ended while the plane was still at 26,000 feet (7,900 meters) of altitude after the flight recorder and all the plane’s hydraulic systems lost power.
The cockpit voice recorder, which continued working because it had a battery backup, could also help shed light, but the NTSB did not release a transcript of what it found on those recordings.
It is up to Chinese authorities to release those details.
Jeff Guzzetti, who formerly investigated crashes for the NTSB and the Federal Aviation Administration, said the flight data suggests a struggle and the crash could have been a pilot suicide.
There have been a number of previous instances of that, including a Germanwings flight that crashed into the French alps in 2015, killing everyone aboard.
‘Typically when you want to roll an airplane, it’s a smooth movement of the control wheel in one direction.
‘But here you have it moving back and forth, back and forth, as if someone is trying to counter the initial movement of the roll,’ Guzzetti said. ‘So it’s not conclusive, but it sure has the earmarks of a struggle in the cockpit.’
The details about this crash will renew longstanding industry concerns about how to ensure pilots’ mental health.
The plane carrying the second black box of the crashed China Eastern Airlines Flight MU5735 arrives at Beijing Capital International Airport on March 27, 2022 in Beijing
Part of the wreckage of the China Eastern passenger jet which crashed onto a mountainside
Many are reluctant to come forward and seek help for fear they could lose their medical certification and be grounded.
Getting recertified can take months or longer during which a grounded pilot is not getting paid. Meanwhile some countries prohibit pilots from taking common psychiatric medicines such as antidepressants.
‘Clearly pilots – and very understandably so – are oftentimes reluctant to come forward, knowing that to get recertified after having gone through a mental health evaluation, it can be very arduous and very lengthy,’ Cox said.
Guzzetti said the co-pilot of an Egypt Air plane that crashed in 1999 is believed to have deliberately sent it into the ocean off New York.
In 2023, in an incident that did not end in a crash, an off-duty pilot who took psychedelic mushrooms days beforehand tried to cut the engines of a Horizon Air flight while riding off-duty in the cockpit.
The jet was flying from Kunming in the southwest to Guangzhou, near Hong Kong, when it went into a nosedive at about 8,800 meters (29,000 feet), appeared to recover but then slammed into the mountain.
The crash left a 65-foot (20-meter) crater and set the forest on fire.
The crew reported no problems before losing contact with air traffic control. Chinese investigators said no abnormalities were found among the plane or crew or with outside elements such as bad weather.
Cox also said the new report from the NTSB does not indicate any problem with the plane.
The March 21, 2022, crash was a rare failure for the Chinese airline industry, which dramatically improved safety following deadly crashes in the 1990s. China Eastern is one of four major state-owned airlines in the country.
