Tuesday, May 5, 2026 - Chinese authorities have been accused of concealing details surrounding a suspected deliberate passenger plane crash that claimed the lives of all 132 people on board.New details published by the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) appear to confirm long-running suspicions that China Eastern Airlines Flight 5735 was intentionally crashed into mountains in Guangxi province in March 2022 - only for Beijing to suppress information.
The Boeing 737 had been cruising between Kunming and
Guangzhou when both engines were manually shut down, the autopilot was
disengaged, and the aircraft was forced into a steep nosedive, according to the
US findings.
Data extracted from the flight recorders showed a terrifying
struggle inside the cockpit, with two pilots fighting over the controls as the
jet plunged towards the ground.
The NTSB said: ‘It was found that while cruising at
29,000ft, the fuel switches on both engines moved from the run position to the
cut-off position. Engine speeds decreased after the fuel switch movement.’
Graphs released by the American agency showed opposing
movements on the pilot's control yokes, indicating one crew member was
attempting to recover the aircraft while another continued forcing it into a
dive.
Video captured from the ground showed the plane plunging
almost vertically from the sky.
No distress call was made by the crew, and no emergency
transponder code was transmitted before the impact.
Last year, China's Civil Aviation Administration warned that
any further 'disclosure [about the crash] may, if released, endanger national
security and social stability'.
The NTSB has been asked to decode the aircraft's black boxes
after the crash and sent its findings to Chinese authorities just two weeks
after the recorders were recovered in 2022.
Extracts were only released publicly this week after a
Chinese citizen submitted a freedom of information request in the United
States.
According to Mail Online, the agency said the flight data
recorder stopped after around 90 seconds because of a power failure, although
the battery-powered cockpit voice recorder continued operating.
The NTSB said it no longer holds a copy of the audio after
transmitting it to Beijing.
Chinese investigators have repeatedly stated in previous
updates that the aircraft's systems appeared to be functioning normally before
the crash.
Just two months after the disaster, however, a US
investigator told The Wall Street Journal that 'the plane did what it was told
to do by someone in the cockpit'.
References to the report were later scrubbed from Chinese
social media.
Three pilots were on the flight deck at the time of the
crash - Captain Yang Hongda, 32, first officer Zhang Zhengping, 59, and trainee
second officer Ni Gongtao, 27.
Speculation in China has focused heavily on Zhang, one of the airline's
senior pilots, who had reportedly recently lost his captain's rank.
No official conclusion identifying responsibility has ever been published.
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