China Eastern’s Boeing 737-800s back in the air after March crash
- Carrier uses aircraft on commercial and test flight on the weekend, tracking website says
- Flights come less than a month after one of the airline’s planes crashed in Yunnan, killing 132 people on board
China Eastern flight MU5843, operated by a three-year-old Boeing 737-800 aircraft, took off from the southwestern city of Kunming at around 9.58am on Sunday and landed at Chengdu, also in southwestern China, at 11.03am, data from Flightradar24 showed.
That aircraft, which completed a test flight on Saturday, departed Chengdu at 1.02pm for Kunming, according to Flightradar24.
Another Boeing 737-800 jet conducted a test flight on Sunday morning in Shanghai, where China Eastern is based, Flightradar24 data showed.
China Eastern was not immediately available for comment.
02:00
All 132 people on board China Eastern Air crash confirmed dead as second black box recovered
On March 21, Flight MU5735, which was en route from Kunming to Guangzhou, crashed in the mountains of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region and killed 123 passengers and nine crew members in mainland China’s deadliest aviation disaster in 28 years.
With the original deadline on Wednesday just days away, Chinese aviation regulators have said little about the progress of the investigation.
Two weeks ago, civil aviation chief Feng Zhenglin used a safety meeting to remind Communist Party officials of their responsibilities to resolve issues with their workforce’s mental health and personal problems.
He said the agency had told airlines to help ease stress among flight crew and safety inspectors.
