US flight data boosts claim China Eastern plane deliberately crashed in 2022, killing 132 people

A United States' National Transportation Safety Board report said a review of flight data supports the belief that a China Eastern flight deliberately crashed in China four years ago, killing all 132 people on board.

The data was taken from the Boeing 737-800 passenger jet's flight data recorder, which was taken from the crash site in the remote Guangxi region of China and sent to Washington, D.C., for analysis. 

The U.S. is involved in the investigation because Boeing is an American company. 

The flight data showed that the fuel switches to both jet engines were moved from the run position to the cutoff position, which requires a pilot to pull the switch up before moving it from the run to cutoff position, supporting a theory that the crash was intentional, according to CNN.

“This data clearly shows that the fuel switches were manually placed in the off position just prior to the crash,” David Soucie, a CNN aviation safety analyst, told the outlet. “There is no indication the switches were placed back to the on position. That indicates there was no attempt to restart the engines. If the switches were turned off in error the pilots would have made an attempt to turn them back on.”

It is not clear who would allegedly be behind the crash and the findings contradict the Civil Aviation Administration of China's claim that all systems were seemingly functioning as normal at the time of the crash, according to The Times. But graphs showed one pilot pushed the aircraft into a steep dive while the other pilot attempted to stop the dive.

Despite the graphs, China reiterated its belief that everything was functioning normally in a statement in 2024, claiming it did not find any issues with the plane, its crew or weather conditions before the Boeing 737 took off from Kunming.

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.