March 21st - The Sad News Of A Plane Crash In China – And Seeking To Put Aviation Safety In Perspective.
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 21 March 2022
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
An airliner, operated by China Eastern Airlines, has crashed in the southern province of Guangxi while carrying 132 people on board. A rescue operation is underway and the number of casualties is yet to be confirmed.
In light of this sad tragedy, I give an overview of the latest developments in aviation safety and of Boeing 737 aircrafts.
Of course this podcast is completely free, as is my weekly travel email. You can sign up at independent.co.uk/newsletters.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Simon Calder, welcoming you to today's independent travel podcast for Monday the 21st of March 2022, which I'm afraid is a day of great sadness. News has been coming in throughout the day about the loss of China Eastern Flight 5735, operating a domestic flight from Kunmin to Guangzhou. |
| 0:28.6 | It appears to have crashed with all 132 people on board, very sadly killed. And of course, my thoughts, and I'm sure yours are with |
| 0:43.0 | the loved ones of the victims on that flight. I, at this stage, cannot do anything to |
| 0:51.2 | speculate on the cause of the accident, that would be very wrong with |
| 0:57.0 | the investigators just beginning their painstaking task and of course the news spreading to family members. |
| 1:06.0 | But perhaps the most useful thing I can do is just talk about how extremely safe aviation is |
| 1:15.1 | and how this tragedy without wishing in any sense to diminish it is a very, very unusual event. |
| 1:26.3 | So the aircraft involved, Boeing 737, has been flying since 1967, by far the most |
| 1:37.0 | successful aircraft type ever made in terms of the numbers manufactured and I'm possibly like you have flown on far more of |
| 1:47.3 | these than I have of any other aircraft type as with all aspects of aviation the story has been |
| 1:57.2 | pretty much one of increasing safety. |
| 2:01.3 | Figures put out actually by Boeing in 2019 |
| 2:05.3 | show that the earliest versions of the 737 |
| 2:09.3 | flew 1.1 million flights for each fatal crash. |
| 2:14.2 | The classic 737, which is the the 300 400 and 500 series made 4 million departures per fatal accident |
| 2:25.9 | and the new generation Boeing 737s which include the 800 type which crashed today as well as the 600 700 and 900 have operated 12.5 million flights for every fatal event. |
| 2:45.5 | You will of course be aware that the Boeing 737 Max, the latest version, is actually the outlier. |
| 2:53.8 | We saw terrible crashes in 2018 on Lionair Flight 610. |
| 3:00.5 | And in 2019, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 with total loss of 346 people. And that was very squarely down to some software, |
| 3:13.4 | which had been installed, which actually, if a wrong input was given to that software, it would |
| 3:22.0 | actually overcome the pilot's efforts to keep the aircraft |
| 3:27.3 | flying. And clearly they were taken out of circulation for many months and have only recently |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Independent, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Independent and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.