China Eastern Airlines Flight 5735 (MU5735) was a domestic passenger flight from Kunming Changshui International Airport to Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport in China. At 14:23 China Standard Time (06:23 UTC) on 21 March 2022, the Boeing 737-800 aircraft descended steeply mid-flight and struck the ground at high speed in Teng County, Wuzhou, Guangxi, killing all 132 passengers and crew on board. It was the third-deadliest aviation accident in China, the deadliest involving China Eastern Airlines, and the deadliest aviation accident of 2022. The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) is responsible for the investigation.
As of 2026, the CAAC has not released a final accident report and has not published annual updates into the investigation since 2024, which are required under the Convention on International Civil Aviation and the agency's own regulations. The CAAC has stated that no faults or abnormalities were found in the aircraft's systems, structures, or engines.
In May 2026, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) of the United States released flight data recorder (FDR) information in response to a FOIA request from a Chinese citizen. The data showed that the fuel control switches for both engines were moved to the cutoff position, resulting in both engines shutting down. Seconds later, one of the control sticks in the cockpit was pushed down. While the sequence of events is more consistent with the aircraft being deliberately crashed, the document is not a final accident report.
The aircraft involved was a Boeing 737-89P (737NG or 737 Next Generation) registered as B-1791 with serial number 41474. It was powered by two CFM56-7B26E turbofan engines built by CFM International. It first flew on 5 June 2015 and was delivered new to China Eastern Yunnan Airlines (subsidiary of China Eastern Airlines) on 25 June 2015.
The 737-800 has a solid safety record, with 11 previous fatal accidents (the first in September 2006) out of more than 7,000 planes delivered since 1997.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) and the airline reported 123 passengers and 9 crew members to be on the flight, for a total of 132 people. All were Chinese. The occupants included members of 74 families from 17 provinces of China.
The flight crew consisted of three pilots, five flight attendants and an in-flight security guard. The pilots were:
32-year-old Captain Yang Hongda (杨洪达) had been employed as a Boeing 737 pilot since January 2018, with a total of 6,709 flight hours.
59-year-old First Officer Zhang Zhengping (张正平) was amongst China's most experienced commercial pilots, with 31,769 flight hours, and was a flight instructor for China Eastern, having trained more than 100 captains. He had been awarded the honorary title of "Meritorious Pilot" of civil aviation in 2011.
27-year-old Second Officer (as observer) Ni Gongtao (倪公涛), with a total of 556 flight hours, was aboard to fulfill training duties.
The aircraft departed Kunming Changshui International Airport for Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport at 13:15 (05:15 UTC) and was scheduled to land at 15:05 (07:05 UTC). The aircraft was scheduled to travel earlier from Baoshan to Kunming, but this segment of the journey was temporarily suspended due to low passenger numbers as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China.
Contact with the aircraft was lost over the city of Wuzhou. At 14:22 (06:22 UTC), while approaching its top of descent into Guangzhou, the aircraft entered a sudden steep descent from 29,100 feet (8,900 m). It briefly leveled off and climbed from 7,400 ft (2,300 m) to 9,225 ft (2,812 m), but then plunged downwards again, reaching a final recorded altitude of 3,225 ft (983 m) at 376 kn (696 km/h) less than two minutes after the beginning of the descent, with a maximum descent rate of above 32,000 feet (9,800 m) per minute.
At 14:23 (06:23 UTC), the aircraft lost signal and crashed in the mountainous regions of Teng County causing a fire in nearby vegetation. According to an astronautics and aeronautics professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, preliminary data indicated the aircraft traveled close to the speed of sound when it crashed. Data from Flightradar24 suggest it was traveling at speeds of 640 km/h (400 mph) and may have exceeded 1,126 km/h (700 mph) at the time of impact. The aircraft's impact into the ground created a crater 100 ft (30 m) wide and 66 ft (20 m) deep, where most of the wreckage was discovered.
Residents of the villages surrounding the crash site heard a loud explosion. The final descent and crash was recorded by a security camera at the premises of a local mining company. The video showed the plane in a near vertical dive seconds before it struck the ground. Footage from the crash site showed wreckage and a fire. Many smaller pieces of wreckage were scattered in the surrounding area. All of the plane's occupants died. It was the first fatal crash involving China Eastern Yunnan Airlines since November 2004's Flight 5210.
Some information channels such as at Kunming Changshui International Airport and Umetrip temporarily showed the flight had arrived due to not registering the flight's loss of contact. Others showed "loss of contact", "unknown", or a blanked-out status.
Emergency response and recovery
Local authorities dispatched 450 firefighters to the scene of the accident. Firefighters were dispatched by the Wuzhou Fire and Rescue Department at 15:05. At 15:56, firefighters from nearby Tangbu arrived, and at 16:40, firefighters from outside Wuzhou were dispatched from Guilin, Beihai, Hezhou, Laibin and Hechi.
Rescue crews initially had difficulty accessing the site because of the forest fire which was extinguished by 17:25. By evening, 117 out of 650 dispatched rescuers were nearby and headed to the site from three directions. Aircraft wreckage and victims' belongings were found, but no signs of human remains were detected. Workers used hand equipment, detection dogs and UAVs to search for the flight recorders and human remains, finding one flight recorder on 23 March. The crash site was concentrated within a 30-metre (100 ft) radius where most of the wreck was found. Major components such as the horizontal stabilizers, vertical tails, rudders, left and right engines, left and right wings, fuselage parts, landing gear and cockpit were recovered from the area. Rescue workers found a 1.3-metre-long (4 ft 3 in) fragment of a wing trailing edge about 12 kilometres (7 mi) from the main site.