If this was actually a suicide I'm sure you won't hear about it given the country this happened in. China has had a very good safety record in the last two decades after doing pretty bad prior to this era and the government will want to keep it that way. Maintenance, pilot or even regulatory error would be very bad PR in this regard, but pilot suicide of a training Captain on board an aircraft with several experienced pilots would be worse. Last I read was that the black box that was found had to be shipped to the manufacturer for repair to have a chance of a readout. I assume this would be Honeywell in the US so this may save the data from being concealed or published only partially.

2 hours ago, RobPol471 said:

On the hypothesis that this disaster was caused by a suicide, an article was published on a Chinese website that deals with politics where it is stated that the elderly pilot with 32k flight hours was the father of the flight captain and had planned to commit suicide due to a relegation from captain to FO due to a serious flight error and a failure of a simulator test.

Obviously, this article remains a hypothesis until the found CVR and FDR will give the causes of this disaster.

This is the translation of the article with the warning of possible translation errors  and relative link :

"There were three pilots of the crashed plane: the captain was a young second generation pilot, his father was an old captain of China Eastern Airlines and a leader of China Eastern Airlines. There were two co-pilots, one was a young man who had just got on the plane. The other is the old pilot who attempted suicide, that is, the long-time planned person who broke the news. This old pilot was a senior captain and instructor, can be checked on the internet, and was classified as a "five-star captain" by China Eastern Airlines. Yes, he was the captain. Last year, due to a flight error, a terrain warning was issued at Yichang Airport, listed as a serious accident not sure, and it was subsequently corrected by the Yunnan branch of China Eastern Airlines. Eventually, he failed the simulator test and was immediately demoted. "

https://gettr.com/post/p11kc3aae1b

So let me get this straight... Its been a long day. 

The one with 32k hours was a TRE/TRI doing a check on the operating Captain, (who just happened to be his son) so was on the observers seat.  And the operating FO used to be a Captain but was downranked to FO after a safety issue or failing an LPC/OPC.

The reason I say this it would be incredibly rare if not impossible for a training captain (or tre/tri) to be downranked to a training f/o and still be carrying out Checks. 

And the plane just plopped out the sky

I smell a Crock of rubbish here. There's some CRM issue here. 

 

Edited March 27, 20224 yr by fluffyflops

NTSB told Reuters it was helping the Civil Aviation Administration of China   " with the download of the cockpit voice recorder from China Eastern Flight 5735 in our lab in Washington." 

CAAC News, a publication under the Chinese aviation regulator, said on Saturday that the NTSB group of seven investigators and technical advisers had arrived in China.

The NTSB also said a small team from Boeing is also traveling China to assist in the investigation.

Information about the crash must be released in an open, timely and transparent manner, state media said in a report on the meeting of the seven-person Standing Committee of the Communist Party's politburo, China's top leadership.

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/us-ntsb-team-departs-china-take-part-boeing-crash-probe-2022-04-01/

 

 

The Wall Street Journal:

" Flight data indicates someone in the cockpit intentionally crashed a China Eastern jet earlier this year, according to people familiar with U.S. officials’ preliminary assessment of what led to the accident."

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-eastern-black-box-points-to-intentional-nosedive-11652805097

It seemed to me that the descent was similar to that of EgyptAir Flight 990 in 1999. It also had a rapid descent then a recovery then a final, rapid descent. It was generally thought to have been a suicide although it wasn't reported as such.

This is from today’s Daily Telegraph in Britain...

“THE China Eastern Airlines jet that crashed in March was intentionally brought down by someone in the cockpit, data retrieved from the black box appear to suggest.

The plane carrying 123 passengers and nine crew members intentionally nosedived under the control of someone on board, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with a preliminary assessment by US officials.

“The plane did what it was told to do by someone in the cockpit,” the newspaper quoted a source as saying.

Black box flight data recorders recovered from the site were sent to the United States for analysis after the crash.”

Confirming what I suspected.

i said from day one it was a suicide. 22 years in this game.  im not normally wrong. 

16 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

This is from today’s Daily Telegraph in Britain...

“THE China Eastern Airlines jet that crashed in March was intentionally brought down by someone in the cockpit, data retrieved from the black box appear to suggest.

The plane carrying 123 passengers and nine crew members intentionally nosedived under the control of someone on board, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with a preliminary assessment by US officials.

“The plane did what it was told to do by someone in the cockpit,” the newspaper quoted a source as saying.

Black box flight data recorders recovered from the site were sent to the United States for analysis after the crash.”

Confirming what I suspected.

And so another mass murder. May they all rest in peace except the killer(s) Let the killer(s) die, forever, alone, in eternity. It is so sad for the loved ones of the innocent who died. Many of them shall never recover from so much inhumanity; and they'll keep falling out of the sky along with the one's they lost.

It probably doesn't apply in this case but what happened to the recommendation, arising from the Germanwings crash, that there always be two persons in the cockpit?

22 hours ago, dmwalker said:

It probably doesn't apply in this case but what happened to the recommendation, arising from the Germanwings crash, that there always be two persons in the cockpit?

Why did you the Chinese would abide that rule.  Air France have routinely broken rules, numerous times. 

Edited May 19, 20224 yr by fluffyflops

2 hours ago, fluffyflops said:

Why did you the Chinese would abide that rule.

The rule was to prevent a suicidal pilot being alone in the cockpit and locking everyone out. That isn't what happened in this case, is it? 

Are you implying that Air France routinely breaks this rule? That would presumably mean several , or even many, airlines also break this rule. That's a bit depressing to me as a potential passenger. 

Edited May 20, 20224 yr by dmwalker

On 5/18/2022 at 8:12 PM, dmwalker said:

It probably doesn't apply in this case but what happened to the recommendation, arising from the Germanwings crash, that there always be two persons in the cockpit?

Germany scrapped the  2 person rule in 2017. So did Canada, my country. I can`t verify for every country for lack of time. In the case of Canada, the rule`s application period had expired and it was not extended. Why the other countries which dropped it probably varies.

I see that the concern is that security is compromised when more people can enter the cockpit but they would enter only as the pilot is exiting and exit only as the pilot was re-entering, so that doesn't sound any less secure. 

In any case, it seems that security is more compromised when a flight attendant brings the pilots' meals into the cockpit.

Why can't the secure cockpit area be extended to include a toilet? I realise it couldn't be retrofitted because of location of door 1R, but it could be done with new aircraft designs.

The first officer of that airplane was formerly a very senior captain--I think it was Dan Gryder that said he was downgraded after some kind of incident and that the captain of that same jet had something to do with that.

I don't think the two-man rule helps much if one of the pilots comes to work with a preplanned attack in mind.  Pilots get busy on the flight deck...it would be trivially easy to get the jump on the other guy while his head is down doing flying tasks and incapacitate him.

This boils down a human factors problem--when you put a pilot at the controls of an aircraft, he/she needs to be as much a trusted agent as we can make him.  The Air Force has (had?) a program called the "Personnel Reliability Program" that monitors and vets aircrews and missile crews with nuclear-surety related jobs, and removes them from that duty at the first sign of trouble, including medical, mental, financial, family, substance-abuse, disciplinary issues etc.  If pilot murder-suicide becomes a mainstream concern, I could see something like that being applied to commercial pilots (and oh boy would the unions squeal).  If it's true that the FO was culturally disgraced by a downgrade or financially ruined by a bad investment as some others have suggested, a rigorous human factors surety program might have kept him out of the cockpit and prevented this.  It sure wouldn't be a lot of fun to work under that kind of oversight, though.

On 5/20/2022 at 4:12 PM, Bob Scott said:

The first officer of that airplane was formerly a very senior captain--I think it was Dan Gryder that said he was downgraded after some kind of incident and that the captain of that same jet had something to do with that.

I don't think the two-man rule helps much if one of the pilots comes to work with a preplanned attack in mind.  Pilots get busy on the flight deck...it would be trivially easy to get the jump on the other guy while his head is down doing flying tasks and incapacitate him.

This boils down a human factors problem--when you put a pilot at the controls of an aircraft, he/she needs to be as much a trusted agent as we can make him.  The Air Force has (had?) a program called the "Personnel Reliability Program" that monitors and vets aircrews and missile crews with nuclear-surety related jobs, and removes them from that duty at the first sign of trouble, including medical, mental, financial, family, substance-abuse, disciplinary issues etc.  If pilot murder-suicide becomes a mainstream concern, I could see something like that being applied to commercial pilots (and oh boy would the unions squeal).  If it's true that the FO was culturally disgraced by a downgrade or financially ruined by a bad investment as some others have suggested, a rigorous human factors surety program might have kept him out of the cockpit and prevented this.  It sure wouldn't be a lot of fun to work under that kind of oversight, though.

he was downranked and I believe the skipper was a TRE/TRI.   Possible CRM issue putting them both together.  I imagine in China there is no such thing as NOFLY (2 crew that cant be rostered together) due to their "saving face" type of culture.  Its well know in the asian carriers theres a "Shu t   up and say nothing culture"  the Asiana KSFO incident to name many highlighted that.  

Edited May 22, 20224 yr by fluffyflops