Report on China Eastern 5735 Crash Withheld over National Security Concerns

The Chinese government is reportedly withholding information about a deadly 2022 airplane crash on national security grounds.

Hong Kong-based outlet Dimsum Daily reported Friday that a public information request seeking an update on the investigation into China Eastern Airlines Flight 5735 was recently rejected by the Civil Aviation Administration of China. The agency, which oversees all civilian air transportation in China, cited “potential risks to national security and social stability.”

Dimsun Daily did not identify the filer or say what motivated their request. Under China’s public information laws, they could file an appeal to the CAAC or the country’s high court.

Flight 5735, operated using a Boeing 737-800, was flying from Kunming to Guangzhou on March 21, 2022, when it descended sharply and crashed into a mountainous area in Teng County, about 200 miles short of its destination. All 132 people on board were killed.

Video recorded by people on the ground showed the aircraft plummeting vertically in a nose-down position before slamming into the hillside. Bloomberg, assisted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, calculated that the airplane was traveling close to the speed of sound before it crashed.

Still No Answers

Chinese officials initially promised transparency in the investigation and invited representatives from the U.S. FAA, the National Transportation Safety Board, Boeing, and engine manufacturer CFM to take part. Two badly damaged flight recorders were recovered from the crash site and sent to Washington, D.C., for analysis.

A preliminary report issued by the CAAC one month after the crash found that the Boeing 737 was airworthy, the weather was favorable, there were no dangerous items on board, and the flight crew had not made a distress call.

Little new information was released afterward, and in May 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. officials believed the flight was deliberately crashed. The newspaper’s sources said input from the cockpit flight controls, not an external force or equipment failure, pushed the airplane into a vertical dive. They also pointed to the lack of a mayday call and the fact that the aircraft’s landing gear and flaps were not deployed, as would be expected during an emergency landing.

Chinese authorities dismissed the report for “misleading the public.” One year later, in 2023, the CAAC issued an unusually brief statement saying that its probe was continuing due to the “very complicated and very rare” nature of the crash. The agency released another statement on the two-year anniversary of the crash in 2024, disclosing no new information, and has yet to provide another update.

In March of this year, Reuters wrote an article on the three-year anniversary and the Chinese public’s frustration with the lack of answers.

“Three years… no results? Does nobody remember?” wrote one Chinese social media user.

The CAAC and China Eastern declined to comment.