China Eastern Airlines restart using Boeing 737-800 plane after March crash

In less than a month after the crash that killed 132 people on board, China Eastern Airlines has restarted using Boeing 737-800 jetliners for commercial flights, data from a tracking website showed on April 17. The crash grounded over 200 of its aircraft last month.

China Eastern flight MU5843, operated by a three-year-old Boeing 737-800 aircraft, took off from the southwestern city of Kunming at 09:58 a.m, local time (0158 GMT) on April 17 and landed at Chengdu, also in southwestern China, at 11:03 am local time, data from Flightradar24 showed.

That aircraft, which completed a test flight on April 16, departed Chengdu at 13:02 pm. for Kunming, according to Flightradar24.

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Another Boeing 737-800 jet conducted a test flight on Sunday morning (April 17) in Shanghai, where China Eastern is based, Flightradar24 data showed. China Eastern was not immediately available for comment.

On March 21, Flight MU5735, which was en route from Kunming to Guangzhou, crashed in the mountains of Guangxi and killed 123 passengers and nine crew members in mainland China`s deadliest aviation disaster in 28 years.

China has retrieved both of the black boxes and has said it would submit a preliminary report to the U.N. aviation agency ICAO within 30 days of the event.

(With inputs from Reuters)

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