More than four years after the plane crash of China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735, which crashed in southern China on March 21, 2022, killing all 132 people on board, new documents confirm some hypotheses that have already circulated in recent years. Stopping the flow of fuel to the engines would have been a voluntary action, carried out right inside the cockpit.
The plane crashed on purpose
The information emerges from data from the US National Transportation Safety Board, made public between the end of April and the beginning of May 2026 in response to a request for access to documents submitted by a citizen. According to the report reviewed by CNN, while the Boeing 737-800 was flying at a cruising altitude of 29,000 feet, the fuel switches on both engines were simultaneously moved from the supply to the off position.
The maneuver caused an immediate drop in engine power, preceding the dramatic dive of the aircraft. On the Boeing 737 series, the fuel switches are levers that require precise action: the pilot must voluntarily lift them before he can pull them down to turn them off. David Soucie, aviation safety analyst at CNNunderlined how the absence of any trace in the data of an attempt to return the switches to the operational position demonstrates the intentionality of the gesture: “If the switches had been turned off by mistake, the pilots would have attempted to turn them back on.”
Aviation industry sources also point out that the records also indicate the autopilot was deactivated at the exact same time the fuel was cut. While the power went out after the fuel outage, the cabin voice recorder continued to work by drawing on a backup battery: US investigators successfully extracted four audio fragments from the damaged device and transferred them to the Civil Aviation Administration of China for official analysis. No copies of the audio files or transcriptions were retained, in compliance with international conventions that assign the lead of the investigation to the country in which the accident occurred.
The silence of Beijing
The Chinese civil aviation authorities have not yet issued an official final report, a document which by international standards is usually completed within 12 months of the tragedy. Over the years, the authorities have limited themselves to formal updates declaring the absence of meteorological, structural, engine anomalies or crew health problems, systematically rejecting rumors regarding possible sabotage or suicide in the cabin.
Recently, Chinese authorities justified the failure to publish interim reports by citing potential risks to “national security and social stability.” Already in 2022, the Wall Street Journal had revealed that the plane had been deliberately taken into a no-return dive by “someone in the cockpit”.