Co-pilot of Boeing 737-800 flight 'decided to take revenge' on China Eastern Airlines

Following on from my story posted Monday 21st March

Aviation Expert Byron Bailey says co-pilot of Boeing 737-800 flight 'decided to take revenge' on China Eastern Airlines

Aviation Expert Captain Byron Bailey said it looks like the co-pilot of the Boeing 737-800 "decided to take revenge" on China Eastern Airlines after he was dropped from his role as a high time captain.

Flight data suggests a person in the cockpit of a China Eastern Airlines plane that crashed earlier this year had intentionally pushed the plane into a vertical nosedive.

Aviation Expert Captain Byron Bailey said it looks like the co-pilot of the Boeing 737-800 "decided to take revenge" on China Eastern Airlines after he was dropped from his role as a high time captain.

"This plane was in cruise, it suddenly entered a steep dive, levelled off for 20 seconds then resumed a steep dive and crashed," Mr Bailey told Sky News Australia's Kieran Gilbert.

"What the flight data recorder shows is that somebody was pushing the control column forward and that means it was intentional, and we think it was the co-pilot."

Mr Bailey said a Chinese aviation source had told him the co-pilot was previously a "high time captain" who had been "busted back to co-pilot".

"Which meant that his salary dropped to a quarter of what he had before, then of course there's the loss of face and the shame. So it looks like this particular dude decided to take revenge on China Eastern."

Mr Bailey said the crash, which marked China's worst aviation disaster in nearly 30 years, was due to human interference.

"95 per cent of all accidents have some pilot input. Whether they mishandle an abnormal situation and make it worse," he said.

"But in these cases where the suicide murder… They all have motives, and perhaps you should look closely at the mental attitude of some of the pilots."

The Boeing 737-800 was travelling from Kunming to Guangzhou on the 21st March when it plummeted in a vertical nosedive - killing all 132 people on board.

The plane was nearing its destination when it suddenly dropped from an altitude of 29,100ft to 9075ft in just two minutes and 15 seconds.

"The plane did what it was told to do by someone in the cockpit," a US official familiar with the preliminary assessment told the Wall Street Journal.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) in April denied rumours of a deliberate crash, and said investigators found no evidence of "anything abnormal".

In a statement, the CAAC said all staff had met safety requirements before takeoff and did not appear to have run into bad weather, noting a full investigation could take two or more years.




Story Sourced from here
Aviation Expert Byron Bailey says co-pilot of Boeing 737-800 flight ‘decided to take revenge’ on China Eastern Airlines | Sky News Australia