China Plane Crash: 5 Recent Air Accidents Involving A Boeing Aircraft

A China Eastern Airlines plane carrying 132 people crashed in the Guangxi province on Monday.

File image of an Indonesian rescue team lifting a pair of tyres from the ill-fated Lion Air flight JT 610 off Karawang in the Java Sea on November 4, 2018. The Boeing 737 MAX plane crashed into the sea in October 2018 | Photo: Getty

New Delhi: Boeing has been one of the pioneers of commercial aircraft manufacturing. The slogan of “If it ain't Boeing, we're not going" was a testimony to the trust it enjoyed. But the American aircraft company's reputation took a hit in the recent past with multiple fatal accidents grounding its flagship model 737 Max.

Two 737 MAX planes crashed back to back within a span of five months in 2018 and 2019, which were later found out to be due to a flawed design, according to reports. The 737 MAX was temporarily grounded across the world after this.

On Monday, a China Eastern Airlines plane carrying 132 people crashed in the Guangxi province. According to media reports, it was a Boeing 737-800 aircraft.

Boeing Crashes Since 2018  

• Lion Air Flight 610, 2018: Barely 13 minutes after taking off from the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, a Boeing 737 MAX aircraft headed to Pangkal Pinang in Indonesia with 189 people on board, six cabin crew and two pilots crashed into the sea. The final investigative report pointed fingers at Boeing’s design of the plane, especially the automatic anti-stall software Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MACS), which overrode the pilot’s instruction causing the plane’s nose to dive.
• Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, 2019: The Boeing 737 Max aircraft flying from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia to Nairobi crashed just six minutes after its take-off. There were 149 people and eight crew members on board. The crash was also attributed to Boeing’s anti-stall software MACS.  
• Air India Express Flight 1344, 2020: The Boeing 737-800 aircraft carrying passengers from Dubai (United Arab Emirates) to Kozhikode (India) as part of the Covid-19 repatriation effort, Vande Bharat Mission by the Indian government, had a major accident on landing. Due to heavy rain and tailwind, the pilots had aborted two attempts of landing. When they tried for a third time, the plane skidded off the end of the tabletop runway and slid down the hill. As many as 19 passengers lost their lives, but 165 passengers and four cabin crew members survived the crash.
• Pegasus Airlines Flight 2193, 2020: The Turkish domestic aeroplane, also a Boeing 737-800, was completely destroyed after it skidded off the runway while landing at the Istanbul-Sabiha Gökçen International Airport in Turkey. There were three fatalities while 179 passengers were injured. The investigative report pointed at human error and said the flight crew may have ceased braking efforts without realising that there were high tailwinds.
• Atlas Air Flight 3591, 2019: The American domestic cargo aeroplane, a Boeing 767-375ER(BCF), was travelling from Miami International Airport to George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston (Texas) when it plane crashed into Trinity Bay, killing the three flight crew on board. Investigators attributed the accident to pilot error.