China Eastern resumes 737-800 flights after an accident

China Eastern Airlines resumed flying Boeing 737-800 aircraft on Sunday, flight tracking records showed, simply weeks after it grounded 223 planes over a crash that killed 132 humans.

Flight MU5843, running the 800 variations of the 737, departed the southwestern metropolis of Kunming at nine:58 am nearby time (0158 GMT) and landed in Chengdu at 11:03 am, in keeping with Flightradar.

The three-year-old jet later returned to Kunming from Chengdu, with further flights scheduled for Tuesday.

Flight MU5735 — a 737-800 — was en route from Kunming to Guangzhou on March 21 when it nosedived into a mountainside, disintegrating on impact.

The jet dropped 20,000 feet (6,096 meters) in just over a minute. The velocity of the impact left twisted metal and passengers’ belongings scattered across a vast swathe of forest.

The cause of the disaster, China’s deadliest plane crash in more than 30 years, is not yet known.

The accident caused China Eastern to ground all of its 737-800s for safety checks as aviation authorities vowed an extensive two-week inspection of China’s vast passenger fleet.

Authorities have retrieved both black boxes from the downed jet, which are currently being analyzed at an American lab with the help of investigators from the United States government.

An initial research record might be completed within 30 days of the crash, the authorities formerly stated.

China Eastern’s resumption of 737-800 flights on Sunday came as Boeing awaits approval to resume operation of the 737’s MAX version in China, the remaining major marketplace yet to offer the inexperienced light.

The 737 MAX became briefly grounded global following crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed a blended 346 humans in 2018 and 2019.