(Yicai Global) April 18 -- Shares of China Eastern Airlines rose after the Chinese carrier resumed Boeing 737-800 flights a month after one of its planes of the same type crashed, killing all 132 people on board.

China Eastern [SHE: 600115] gained 2.7 percent today to closed at CNY4.96 (78 US cents). The stock is still down about 13 percent since the accident on March 21.

A Boeing 737-800 passenger jet of China Eastern took off from Kunming Changshui International Airport at 10.00 a.m. yesterday and landed at Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport one hour later. It returned to Kunming in the afternoon.

After last month’s crash of flight MU5735, which was bound for Guangzhou from Kunming, China Eastern grounded its entire Boeing 737-800 fleet, including those of subsidiaries Shanghai Airlines and China United Airlines, over safety concerns.

Yicai Global learned from Shanghai-based China Eastern that those flown by Shanghai Airlines will return to the skies around April 20. Each flight will have three pilots instead of the usual two until the results of the official investigation into the cause of the crash are released.

But China Eastern’s Boeing 737-800 jets with registration numbers close to the one that went down will not resume flights, as they are still undergoing checks.

Editor: Tang Shihua, Futura Costaglione