https://twitter.com/hashtag/MU5735?src=hashtag_click

This crash involves a China Eastern Airlines737-89P (B-1791) 133 reported lost. 

Edited March 21, 20224 yr by CYXR

Appears to have entered a steep dive from FL290 cruising altitude to 3200 ft in about 3:20 minutes with 376 kts GS as the last recorded airspeed, according to Flightradar24 data.

Does China typically publish accident investigation data or do they keep it under wraps?

Edit: Video footage alleged to show the accident flight shows the aircraft going down perpendicular to the ground in a full nose dive. Last vertical speed -31000 ft/min...

Edited March 21, 20224 yr by threegreen

I noticed some discrepancies between the two published videos which would show the last seconds before the plane impact on the ground but obviously I could be wrong but I seem to see that on the video taken with a mobile that shows the crash of the plane on a display, the plane fall angle is perpendicular to the ground while the video of the camera installed on the car shows the plane fall with a non-perpendicular fall angle as shown by the other video.

Among the videos published, the one that would show the fall recorded and transmitted by a mobile phone from inside the plane, it seems to me not attributable to this crashed plane because the logo and the colors that can be seen on the winglet of the wing, are not attributable to the Company or to those shown in the photos of the plane.
  
I made some enlargements and still images on my tablet of the video that shows the fall perpendicular to the ground and even here obviously I could be wrong but if you can clearly see a shape attributable to an airplane fuselage, I could not see something attributable to the wings thinking which was due to the camera angle that does not show the wings because they are perpendicular to the fuselage but in this case the rudder had to be visible while from an enlargement of a still image, I seem to see the lack of the tail of the plane but I repeat myself, I could certainly be wrong given the distance of the images taken and only the recovery of the flight recordings will be able to clarify what happened to this plane.

10 minutes ago, RobPol471 said:

I noticed some discrepancies between the two published videos which would show the last seconds before the plane impact on the ground but obviously I could be wrong but I seem to see that on the video taken with a mobile that shows the crash of the plane on a display, the plane fall angle is perpendicular to the ground while the video of the camera installed on the car shows the plane fall with a non-perpendicular fall angle as shown by the other video.

Among the videos published, the one that would show the fall recorded and transmitted by a mobile phone from inside the plane, it seems to me not attributable to this crashed plane because the logo and the colors that can be seen on the winglet of the wing, are not attributable to the Company or to those shown in the photos of the plane.
  
I made some enlargements and still images on my tablet of the video that shows the fall perpendicular to the ground and even here obviously I could be wrong but if you can clearly see a shape attributable to an airplane fuselage, I could not see something attributable to the wings thinking which was due to the camera angle that does not show the wings because they are perpendicular to the fuselage but in this case the rudder had to be visible while from an enlargement of a still image, I seem to see the lack of the tail of the plane but I repeat myself, I could certainly be wrong given the distance of the images taken and only the recovery of the flight recordings will be able to clarify what happened to this plane.

The two videos were taken from different angles which is probably why the aircraft's attitude looks different, although on both it's a complete nose dive with an angle to the ground of just maybe 10° on the second video.

The video from 'inside the plane' is a pathetic attempt at getting attention as it's an Ethiopian Airlines livery and from one of our simulators. These people have no shame when it comes to collecting internet points. Either that or it was posted in a different context and someone fell for it thinking it was the China Eastern aircraft.

The resolution on both videos isn't very good and they are shot from distance, so I'm not sure if one could expect to see the vertical stabilizer, which is white vs. white/grey background, even on a zoomed in picture.

In any case this looks like a very rare and strange accident judging by the fact the aircraft apparently nose dived from cruise altitude into the ground.

Phf, poor passengers. That must have been an intens few last minutes.

Technically really weird. I hope we get to the bottom.. but who knows..

On a world aeronautical forum, attended by pilots and maintenance technicians, a photo of some wreckage attributable to the rear moving part of the tail rudder was shown. The photo shows these wrecks on the ground and around there is intact vegetation and there is no trace of fire and whoever posted the photo says however not specifying at what distance from the impact of the plane that this debris is not were found in this impact area.
Another forumist who from his nickname seems to be a maintenance technician, referring to the posted photo wrote:

 " Well the rudder is composite and the blue ends at the trailing edge; strange how some rivets are torn through and others just popped; the aluminum non painted piece looks whole and with no external paintwork unlikely the nose of the rudder, presume could be a back closing panel of the V.fin where the nose of the rudder swings, the green bracket also that area and so rudder flutter and delamination less likely in MHO.
JAL123 a B747 RPB repair failure leading to an over pressurisation in the tail section comes to mind, though it is unlikely to have been started in this case by a cabin air loss as blow out vents are now designed to cope with this. "

One pilot wrote:

 "As a lifelong professional jet pilot I make a couple of observations.

A runaway trim that is not detected (?) Will put the aircraft into an uncontrollable dive - but NOT a vertical one.
This a / c seems to have been just fine and stable right up to the point it left cruise altitude approaching destination.
The fact we are seeing lots of panels on the surface with pulled rivets suggests design forces were exceeded in flight leading to structure break up. The rest of the structure is in a very deep hole.
No conclusions can be drawn from the FR24 data that a recovery was being attempted. This aircraft had departed controlled flight suddenly and catastrophically

For me the circumstances are very similar to Metrojet 9268 (EI-ETJ) that crashed in Sinai. When the four corners are established we may well find that the empennage is not located with the main body of the wreckage indicating separation. The list of causal factors for that separation at the end of a stable cruise is a very short list indeed. "

This may just be an error in the data, but what seems strange to me is that speed remained constant at cruise altitude speed throughout the nose dive and final speed at impact is even less. You would expect a high increase in speed given that flight profile.

im sure the chinease will be completely honest, open and transparent as they normally are. 

my money is on pilot suicide.  That a/c came down like a dart.

Id also like to know why they had 9 "operating"  crew on a 738.  Or did they have deadheading crew which they are counting as operating crew instead of pax.

If so then there surely must of been some sort of training either flightdeck or cabin crew and would be interesting if it was flight deck, (im sure it must of been) was it Initial or Conversation Line Training, an annual line check,Command Training, TRE/TRI Training or Consolidation Training, blah blah  Either way be interesting to know.

Like the others have said i dont hold much hope the CAAC are honest and upfront with whatever the boxes (if they are found) say and the maintainence records/tech long and acars data holds any clues. But as the others have said I dont hold much luck.

Edited March 22, 20224 yr by fluffyflops

11 hours ago, threegreen said:

This may just be an error in the data, but what seems strange to me is that speed remained constant at cruise altitude speed throughout the nose dive and final speed at impact is even less. You would expect a high increase in speed given that flight profile.

Wasn't it close to the aerodynamic limitations of the airframe in terms of airspeed when it was in the last throes of its final dive? It might simply not have been able to push through the air any faster.

On 3/21/2022 at 11:51 PM, JonP01 said:

Wasn't it close to the aerodynamic limitations of the airframe in terms of airspeed when it was in the last throes of its final dive? It might simply not have been able to push through the air any faster.

Have they released the loadsheet or ofp?

Surely not 

Edited March 22, 20224 yr by fluffyflops

I am wondering what element of the pitch system gives the most lift in case of a failure on a 737, horizontal stabilizer or elevator?

On 3/21/2022 at 12:12 PM, threegreen said:

This may just be an error in the data, but what seems strange to me is that speed remained constant at cruise altitude speed throughout the nose dive and final speed at impact is even less. You would expect a high increase in speed given that flight profile.

From a guy who spends his whole working day tracking a fleet on fr24 (and sita) sometimes the data is wrong especially in certain areas of the world. China being one of them

Like I said be interesting to see what acars data China Eastern give the investigation. 

12 hours ago, JonP01 said:

Wasn't it close to the aerodynamic limitations of the airframe in terms of airspeed when it was in the last throes of its final dive? It might simply not have been able to push through the air any faster.

Come to think of it, I forgot it's ground speed, not IAS or TAS. Since an aircraft diving would have a ground speed of zero (or close to it) the speed graph should rapidly fall towards zero speed during the dive. It does that later so I guess it's just a delay in data transmitting since the aircraft entered a complete dive so suddenly the transmitted data from the transponder probably didn't catch the extreme change in time. The late increase in ground speed could indicate a partial recovery before diving again. It all seems to have happened so fast that the transmittance of ground speed lagged behind.

5 hours ago, bendead said:

I am wondering what element of the pitch system gives the most lift in case of a failure on a 737, horizontal stabilizer or elevator?

I don't see why there would be a distinction since the elevator is part of the horizontal stabilizer. It's the whole stabilizer that provides lift.

5 minutes ago, threegreen said:

I don't see why there would be a distinction since the elevator is part of the horizontal stabilizer. It's the whole stabilizer that provides lift.

Because the two parts are moving independently, if the stabilizer is locked in nose down position, is it possible to level the 737 with elevator input only? Same question if the elevator is locked, and only moving the stabilizer.