Bloomberg News
@Bloomberg-News·2.8M subscribers·40.1K videos
China Plane Crash: Wallets, IDs Found In Boeing 737-800 Wreckage
Posted
March 23, 2022
Views
85,683
Likes
225
Comments
136
Engagement
March 23, 2022
85,683
225
136
0.42%
Every word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
Episode Timeline
Every episode in order around the one you’re watching — click any card and the page flips straight to it.
1:04Now PlayingMud-stained wallets, IDs and other items were found on a mountainside in Guangxi where 132 lives were presumed lost after a China Eastern Airlines plane crash. The Boeing 737-800 was traveling at close to the speed of sound before slamming into a hillside.
Video clips show small pieces of the plane and exposed earth where the plane crashed, but no survivors have been found.
Family members gathered at the destination and departure airports, as investigators looked into why the Boeing 737-800 made a steep dive shortly before it would have begun its descent to land.
The search for the black boxes holding the flight data and cockpit voice recorders will be difficult at the remote site accessible only by foot or motorcycle.
The Boeing 737-800 was knifing through the air at more than 640 miles (966 kilometers) per hour, and at times may have exceeded 700 mph, according to data from Flightradar24, a website that tracks planes.
“The preliminary data indicate it was near the speed of sound,” said John Hansman, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology astronautics and aeronautics professor who reviewed Bloomberg’s calculation of the jet’s speed. “It was coming down steep.”
Sound travels at 761 mph at sea level but slows with altitude as air temperature goes down and is about 663 mph at 35,000 feet (10,668 meters).
Flight MU5735 was flying to Guangzhou from Kunming with 132 people on board at an altitude of about 29,000 feet when it began a sudden descent, according to data transmitted by the plane and captured by Flightradar24. The jetliner was cruising at about 595 mph before the dive.
The speed data is consistent with videos appearing to show the jet diving at a steep angle in the moments before impact and indicates that it likely hit the ground with huge force.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Subscribe to our newest channel Quicktake Explained
Bloomberg Quicktake brings you live global news and original shows spanning business, technology, politics and culture. Make sense of the stories changing your business and your world.
To watch complete coverage on Bloomberg Quicktake 24/7, visit or watch on Apple TV, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, Fire TV and Android TV on the Bloomberg app.
Have a story to tell? Fill out this survey for a chance to have it featured on Bloomberg Quicktake
Connect with us on…
Breaking News on YouTube
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.
