New data on 2022 China plane crash suggests cockpit struggle and fuel cut

Newly released data suggests someone intentionally cut off fuel to both engines of a China Eastern Airlines jet and there was a struggle for controls before the plane slammed into a mountain in 2022, killing all 132 people on board.

In response to a public records request, the National Transportation Safety Board recently released a report on what the Boeing 737-800’s flight data recorder revealed. The NTSB was involved in the Chinese investigation because the plane and engines were made by American companies and American investigators are considered the world’s leading experts in post-crash black box analysis.

Aviation safety experts agree that the data shows that both engines shut down and someone sent the plane into a 360-degree nose-down and roll, but it does not conclusively show exactly what happened because the Civil Aviation Administration of China has yet to release its final report until four years later. International standards require that investigators aim to publish their report approximately one year after an accident.

The NTSB report is dated July 1, 2022. It was released on May 1, but the first articles about it were not published until this week.

By design, a 737’s fuel levers cannot be easily hit or inadvertently closed: someone has to pull them back to release them before they move. John Cox, CEO of Safety Operating Systems, said the levers lock in place, so it’s likely someone deliberately moved them both to the cutoff position.

The data ended while the plane was still at 26,000 feet (7,900 meters) altitude after the flight recorder and all of the plane’s hydraulic systems lost power, but the report from the previous 12 minutes suggests what happened.

The cockpit voice recorder, which continued to operate on a battery backup, could also help shed light, but the NTSB has not released a transcript of what it found on those recordings. It is up to Chinese authorities to disclose these details.

Jeff Guzzetti, who has investigated the crashes for the NTSB and the Federal Aviation Administration, said flight data suggests a struggle and that the crash could have been a pilot suicide. There have been several such cases, including a Germanwings flight that crashed in the French Alps in 2015, killing everyone on board.

“Typically, when you want to roll an airplane, it’s a smooth movement of the control wheel in one direction. But here, you’re moving it back and forth, back and forth, as if someone was trying to counter the initial movement of the roll,” Guzzetti said. “So it’s not conclusive, but it certainly suggests a struggle in the cockpit.”

The details of this accident will reignite long-standing industry concerns about how to ensure pilots’ mental health.

Many are reluctant to come forward and ask for help, for fear of losing their medical certificate and being punished. Getting recertified can take months or longer, during which time a grounded pilot goes unpaid. At the same time, some countries prohibit pilots from taking common psychiatric medications such as antidepressants.

“Obviously, pilots – and this is very understandable – are often reluctant to come forward, knowing that to get recertified after undergoing a mental health evaluation, it can be very arduous and very time consuming,” Cox said.

Guzzetti said the co-pilot of an Egypt Air plane that crashed in 1999 may have deliberately sent it into the ocean off New York. In 2023, in an incident that did not end in a crash, an off-duty pilot who had taken psychedelic mushrooms days before attempted to shut down the engines of a Horizon Air flight while off-duty in the cockpit.

The plane was flying from Kunming, in the southwest, to Guangzhou, near Hong Kong, when it plunged to about 8,800 meters (29,000 feet), appeared to recover, but then slammed into the mountain. The accident left a 20 meter high crater and set the forest on fire.

The crew reported no problems before losing contact with air traffic control. Chinese investigators said no anomalies were found within the plane or crew, nor with external elements such as bad weather.

Cox also said the new NTSB report indicates no problems with the plane.

The March 21, 2022, crash was a rare setback for China’s airline industry, which has significantly improved safety after fatal crashes in the 1990s. China Eastern is one of the country’s four major state-owned airlines.