Flight MU5735: chief of China’s civil aviation authority promises greater vigilance and stricter safety checks

Feng Zhenglin, director of the Civil Aviation Administration, says safety is crucial to China’s vitality and national security, and must be protected
He says there must be more thorough inspections and officials must improve their aviation safety knowledge

China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735 crash

Mimi Lau

Published: 1:46pm, 7 Apr 2022

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The head of China’s Civil Aviation Administration has vowed to reflect on all aspects of the deadly crash of flight MU5735 and step up safety checks with “extreme” vigilance across the industry.

Speaking at a teleconference on Wednesday, Feng Zhenglin, director of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), told officials to increase their knowledge of air safety regulations and to carry out more thorough inspections to detect hidden risks.

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“Aviation safety is directly linked to [matters of] vital importance to the nation … and the overall prospect of national security. [We] must adopt an extremely responsible attitude, heightened vigilance, more pragmatic and effective measures to guard aviation safety tightly,” according to a statement released by the administration late on Wednesday evening.

“The entire industry must draw a lesson from the painful [MU5735 crash] experience and strive to prioritise the life and safety of people in conducting post-disaster follow-up measures, summarise the lessons learned based on investigation outcomes to strengthen safety and ensure the absolutely safety of people’s lives,” Feng added.

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All 132 people on board China Eastern Air crash confirmed dead as second black box recovered

China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735 crashed with 132 people on board on March 21 near Wuzhou in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

No survivors have been found. Searchers recovered the second black box from the wreckage about a week after the crash. An investigation into the disaster is still ongoing.

US National Transportation Safety Board investigators are helping Chinese officials download data from the two black box recorders that were damaged in the crash.

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The latest crash is the deadliest aviation disaster since 1994 in China. Amid growing demand for air travel, 15 accidents were recorded in the 2000s and only eight occurred in the 2010s.

In 1994, all 160 people on China Northwest Airlines flight WH2303 died when the plane crashed after take-off because of a mechanical failure caused by poor maintenance.

During the teleconference on Wednesday, Feng repeated an order from President Xi Jinping calling for comprehensive safety audits, talent management to be intensified and supervisors held accountable for their roles.

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Feng said it was important to cultivate knowledge in aviation safety and step up real-time monitoring and warnings. Using popular risk-assessment metaphors, he said better frontier research would improve decision-making and prevent “grey rhino” incidents (a foreseeable, but neglected threat) and guard against “black swan” events (something rare and unpredictable).

He also called on officials to improve their outlook and make a fresh start after the tragedy and keep their social responsibilities in mind.

The CAAC regulates the aviation market and oversees flight safety in China, with seven regional administrations across the nation, rendering it effective in exercising its regulatory power.

China Eastern Airlines, along with Air China and China Southern Airlines, are the country’s main airlines and are all state-owned.