Business Standard

US officials can travel to China to aid crash investigation

The U.S. government said Tuesday that China has granted visas for federal investigators to travel there and aid in the investigation of the deadly China Eastern Airlines crash.

China

Smoke rises from a fire after a China Eastern Airlines passenger plane carrying 132 people crashed near Wuzhou city in the Guangxi region

AP Washington

The U.S. government said Tuesday that China has granted visas for federal investigators to travel there and aid in the investigation of the deadly China Eastern Airlines crash.

The National Transportation Safety Board said China also granted visas to technical advisers from Boeing, which made the plane, engine manufacturer CFM and the Federal Aviation Administration.

All would take part in the investigation, under longstanding international agreements.

The safety board said the U.S. officials and industry representatives hope to leave for China this week.

Their travel was held up for several days to meet Chinese visa and COVID-19 regulations, and the NTSB appealed to the State Department to intervene.

 

A China Eastern Boeing 737-800 jet crashed in a remote mountainous area in southern China on March 21, killing all 123 passengers and nine crew members on board.

The plane was cruising at about 29,000 feet about one hour into its flight from Kunming in southeastern China to Guangzhou, an export manufacturing hub near Hong Kong, when it went into a steep descent.

Over the weekend, searchers found the plane's flight data recorder, following earlier recovery of the cockpit voice recorder, which investigators hope will provide important clues about the cause of the crash.

China Eastern, one of four major Chinese airlines, and its subsidiaries have grounded all their Boeing 737-800s, more than 200 planes.

The airline said the grounding was a precaution, not a sign of any problem with the planes.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Topics : China crash

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First Published: Mar 29 2022 | 11:52 PM IST

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