China Eastern Airlines has restarted using Boeing 737-800 aircraft for commercial flights less than a month after a fatal crash that killed 132 people on board and grounded over 200 of its aircraft.
The airline has recovered the black box recorders from China Eastern flight MU5843, which crashed on March 21 in the mountains of Guangxi en route from Kunming to Guangzhou.
In March 2022, the airline’s traffic continued to suffer from COVID-19 with an escalation in local outbreaks within China. The airline’s passenger transportation capacity (measured by available seat-kilometres) decreased by 62.35% year-on-year; passenger traffic volume (measured by revenue passenger-kilometres) decreased by 69.32% year-on-year; and passenger load factor decreased by 13.50 percentage points year-on-year to 59.43%.
The freight transportation business decreased by 17.75% year-on-year.
In March 2022, China Eastern retired one A350 aircraft. As of the end of March 2022, the airline operated a total of 751 aircraft, including 262 self-owned aircraft, 273 aircraft under finance lease and 216 aircraft under operating lease.