Hello, friends! 21st March 2022, at 1:11 PM. Flight MU-5735 took off from Kunming, China. It was a 2-hour long normal passenger flight to Guangzhou. A city in Southeast China. But about an hour after taking off, at 2:20 PM, this plane started losing altitude rapidly. It comes crashing down. Normally, if there's any technical problem in a plane, or if there's any problem with the engine. for such cases, aeroplanes are designed so that they glide while descending. They'll come down at the speed of a few thousand feet in a minute. But this aeroplane fell from a height of nearly 30,000 feet, within 1 minute 35 seconds. Normally, this is the speed at which skydivers descend out of a plane. But here, a large passenger jet started falling vertically. And in less than 2 minutes, it crashed into a hill. When this aeroplane was in a nose-dive, this scene was captured on a camera from afar. It is clearly shown in this video footage, that the plane was falling vertically. It was in a nose-dive. How can this be possible? The passengers of the plane die. It is believed that this crash is one of the worst aeroplane disasters in China. "Administration of China has confirmed that a China Eastern Airlines plane has crashed in the south of the country." "It appears to be descending at about 10,000 feet per minute." So this is well beyond what you would see in the event of an emergency descent. And, so, something went rapidly wrong. We don't know what. One of the black boxes was found in the wreckage of the Boeing jet." "There's no word yet on whether anyone has survived or not." This plane crash has shocked air-crash investigators and experts all around the world. What can be the reason for this plane crashing this way? You can see the data from Flightradar24 on this chart. It shows the altitude of the plane during its flight. Initially, the plane took off normally. That's the slope you see at the beginning. Then it maintained an altitude of 29,000 feet. For about one hour and ten minutes. And then suddenly at 2:20 PM, the plane comes crashing down rapidly. But there's something strange in the chart. At the altitude of about 8,000 feet, while falling, it regains some altitude before falling again. What can be the reason behind this short ascent? It's being said that any type of explanation can be possible. It's possible that the engine of the plane malfunctioned, or the plane suffered from a technical problem, it's also possible that the pilot wanted to commit suicide, or that there was a terrorist attack on the plane, or the pilots had fainted, or even a weather-related problem. Presently, the search and rescue teams are trying to locate the black box and crash recorders of the plane. They're also trying to locate the people who were on the plane. There could be survivors. But we have the weather report during the crash. According to the China Meteorological Administration, that day, at the place of the crash, at 2 in the afternoon, the temperature of the place was around 30°C. Moderate winds were blowing as normal. It was forecasted that it would rain in the evening. It hadn't rained before the crash. And the visibility was more than 10 miles. So the weather conditions then weren't unusual. The weather was absolutely normal. The problem is that it is raining heavily now so the search and rescue teams are facing problems in locating these black boxes. Today, on 23rd March, because of the rain, they had to temporarily stop the search operations. Apart from this, the site of the crash is surrounded by hills and a thick forest. Reaching there and looking for evidence isn't easy. Normally, the flight data recorder and the voice data recorder, are built to be crash-proof. But would they be intact after a crash like this? It's a big question. The latest update is that one of the two black boxes has been found by these search teams. Though the box was damaged from the outside, but the internal records are said to be intact. This black box has been sent to Beijing for further investigation. So hopefully, we'll get more information about the crash. Aviation expert Neil Hansford says that the chances of this crash being an accident are very low. In his opinion, it is highly unlikely that it was an accident. He cited the example of Air France's flight 447. It had crashed in 2009. There were technical problems with that flight. And the pilots were confused because of that. But when the plane crashed, it had descended slowly. But in this crash in China, the plane fell like a rock from the sky. If this crash was because of an accident, it would have been an unimaginable accident. Perhaps both wings of the plane fell off. Or a missile struck the plane. Or that the plane collided with something in the air. Only then would the plane have fallen so. If none of these events happened, then it's highly possible that it was done by the pilot. Or by someone on the plane that took over the control from the pilot. American Federal Aviation Investigator,
Michael Daniel, believes the same. He says that this crash was most likely a foul play. Someone did this intentionally. He cited the examples of two previous crashes. Egypt Air flight 990, flying from New York to Cairo in 1999. Crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. And the SilkAir flight 185, that crashed near Sumatra, Indonesia in 1997. These two are rare examples when aeroplanes took a nose-dive like this. And in both cases, the plane was intentionally crashed by the pilot. Some people are blaming the model of the plane. The two recent plane crashes around the world, the 2018 plane crash in Indonesia, and the Ethiopian plane crash in 2019, the reason behind both plane crashes was the technical problems in the design of the plane. Both plane crashes involved a specific model of plane. Boeing 737-MAX was an upgraded model of the Boeing 737-800. The newer model of the Boeing company. For it, they claimed that they increased the efficiency of the engine of the plane. And to reduce the noise inside the plane, they shifted the engine of the plane a little to the front. At the front of the wings. But by changing the position of the plane's engine, there were aerodynamic problems with the plane. Especially when the flight conditions were unusual, and the weather wasn't right. To solve this problem, Boeing had installed a special software Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System. MCAS. But this special software didn't work as expected. The two crashes in 2018 and 2019, were because of the faulty sensor. The MCAS got activated by mistake, due to this incorrect activation, the nose of the plane dipped down. A pilot from Boeing, criticised the company, saying that when the new model 737-MAX was launched, the company had claimed that the pilots who had the certification of flying the 737-800, they'd have to undergo a minor computer course, to be trained to fly 737-MAX. But the training of flying 737-MAX given to the pilots, was insufficient. Later, it was found that the Federal Aviation Administration of the US, wasn't properly informed by Boeing, about the new system. The MCAS. Due to these reasons, in January 2021, the Department of Justice of the US found that Boeing had tried to defraud the government of the USA, and so they would need to pay a fine of $2.5 billion. But honestly, in the event we're discussing today, this isn't one of the reasons. Because the plane that crashed in China, was of the 737-800 model. Not 737-MAX. The Boeing 737-800 model is being used for years. It's a reliable plane model. It is considered to be one of the safest passenger jets. After looking at all explanations, the most likely scenario here is that the pilot crashed this plane intentionally. And thus, the biggest question is: Why did the pilot do so? Several conspiracy theories have started emerging across Chinese social media. In one of the most popular conspiracy theories, America is actually being blamed. It's being said that in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, because China did not take a clear stand against Russia, America caused this to happen in China. Chinese social media users are coming up with these conspiracy theories. I talked about this in the video on MH 370 plane crash, whenever there's a big disaster, without a clear cut reason for it, which doesn't have a proper explanation, it results in many conspiracy theories being formed by the people. And if after watching this video you're afraid of travelling in planes again, because they keep crashing frequently. You needn't be afraid. Don't worry. Statistically speaking, aeroplanes are one of the safest modes of transportation. The most used models of Boeing planes, Boeing 737-600/700/800/900 plane models, the chances of them crashing, is at 0.07 crashes per million flights. So for every 1 million flights in the world, only 0.07 of them would result in a crash. The chance of a plane crash is so negligible. Apart from this, the Airbus A300 model,
it's another popular model, its chances are 0.46 per million flights. And for Airbus A310, it is at 1.35 crashes per million flights. Obviously, these statistics are from past records. It sees the number of flights a model has completed, and the number of crashes. But in the recent plane crashes, you would notice one thing, it is either because of a technical fault in the software, or it is a deliberate action of the pilot. Crashes because of bad weather or hijacking, have little to no chance of happening. What do you think can be the reason here? Thank you very much!
