Shanghai Airlines

Is Shanghai Airlines safe?

Yes, with one blemish worth knowing about. Shanghai Airlines, the Boeing-flying arm of the China Eastern group, has no fatal accident and no lost aircraft in the Aviation Safety Network data, and it is IOSA-registeredIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary as an IATA member. The weak spot is crew discipline: in January 2020 a 737-800 struck its tail landing at Shanghai Pudong, and the regulator's findings showed the two pilots had broken several basic rules. We score Shanghai Airlines 82.

It is a big operation for a subsidiary. At 30 June 2026 it flew 90 aircraft and carried 7.26 million passengers in the first half of the year, according to China Eastern's interim report.

Why it has its own page

Shanghai Airlines was founded in 1985 as an independent airline and became a wholly owned China Eastern company after a share swap completed in 2010. It kept its brand, its FM code and its own CAAC operating certificate. Under our rules, an airline that flies under its own designator is scored on its own page, even when the ticket says MU.

That has a practical consequence. The MU5735 crash in March 2022, which killed 132 people, was flown by China Eastern's Yunnan company under the China Eastern name, so it counts on the China Eastern page and not here. Shanghai Airlines' own record is much cleaner.

What is on the accident record?

The Aviation Safety Network lists three events for Shanghai Airlines, none fatal to anyone on board.

• March 2005: a Boeing 757 flying as FM9110 had an uncontained failure of a Pratt & Whitney engine on departure from Beijing. There were no injuries and the damage was minor.
• May 2006: at Harbin, a ground worker was killed when he was drawn into the engine of a parked 737. Only someone outside the aircraft died, and no investigation we could find names a cause at the airline, so under our rules we describe it but do not score it.
• October 2002: a passenger took a flight attendant hostage with a pen knife on a flight from Shanghai to Fuzhou and demanded to go to Taiwan. The crew overpowered him. Hijackings by passengers are excluded from our accident score.

The event that matters most is not a crash. In January 2020, a 737-800 on flight FM9194 from Shenyang bounced on landing at Pudong, touched down again nose-high and scraped its tail. The crew went around and landed safely about 12 minutes later. The aircraft was damaged, so it is an accident under international rules, and it keeps the accident factor at 92 rather than higher.

What went wrong in the 2020 tail strike?

The CAAC's findings, as reported in April 2020, are unusually blunt. The first officer was flying the aircraft from the left seat, with the captain in the right seat, although the captain was not qualified as an instructor. After the go-around, with the autopilot engaged, both pilots left their seats at the same time and swapped places. The captain's medical certificate required him to wear glasses for distance vision; he was not wearing them.

As for the landing itself, the regulator found the thrust levers had not been pulled back to idle before touchdown. The aircraft bounced, the crew lost track of the situation and tried to force the landing instead of recovering from the bounce, and the tail hit the runway.

None of this is a design or maintenance problem. It is a training and discipline problem, and it is why we score the incidents factor at 64, below China Eastern (70) and Air China (68).

Other incidents on record

• September 2019, Busan: a 737-800 from Pudong with 162 people on board was cleared to land on runway 18R after a circling approach but touched down on the parallel 18L. South Korea's ARAIB found that the crew had failed to identify the runway, mistook the lights of 18L for those of 18R, and communicated poorly. It rated the event a near-accident.
• February 2017, Taipei Songshan: an A330-300 with 299 people on board shut down an engine after a bang and flames on climb-out and returned safely.

Because the CAAC publishes few investigation reports, most of what we know comes from foreign boards and from the CAAC's rare statements. We do not read a short list as a clean record.

What does Shanghai Airlines fly?

China Eastern's report gives the size (90 aircraft) but not the types or ages. Fleet trackers show a fleet of Boeing 737-800s and newer 737 MAX 8s, plus a smaller number of 787-9s for longer routes. The last Airbus A330 moved to China Eastern in October 2023. The 737-800 is a proven type but uses conventional controls rather than fly-by-wireFly-by-wireA flight control system in which the pilot's inputs go to computers, which then move the control surfaces. Many such systems also stop unsafe manoeuvres.More in the glossary, and with no published average age we score the fleet at 78, a little below China Eastern's mixed fleet (82).

How to fly Shanghai Airlines safely

Check the "operated by" line on any China Eastern booking out of Shanghai: it tells you which crew and which certificate you are flying with. If you are connecting at Shanghai in the summer typhoon season, leave a long connection, because a passing storm can stop departures for hours. And keep your belt loosely fastened whenever you are seated; on the 737 and 787 alike, that is the simplest protection against turbulence.

How we scored it

The accident record (92) is free of fatal crashes and lost aircraft, docked for the damaging 2020 tail strikeTail strikeWhen the tail of an aircraft touches the runway during take-off or landing, usually because the nose was raised too far or too early.More in the glossary. Oversight (80) matches the IOSA-registeredIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary Chinese airlines. Incidents (64) are the weakest factor because of the 2020 cockpit findings and the 2019 Busan landing. Overall 82, close to Juneyao Airlines, Shanghai's private full-service rival.