China Eastern Airline File Photo:IC

China Eastern Airlines on Sunday conducted a flight with a Boeing 737-800 airplane after nearly one month's grounding the aircraft following a fatal crash, and it will gradually resume use of the aircraft, the company told the Global Times.

Data from flight data provider VariFlight sent to the Global Times showed that China Eastern used one of the planes on a flight from Kunming, Southwest China's Yunnan Province to Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan Province around 10 am on Sunday. The plane flew back to Kunming in the afternoon.

China Eastern confirmed to the Global Times that the company's 737-800 passenger planes have resumed operation in an orderly manner. 

The same batch of aircraft as the crashed B1791 aircraft are still undergoing in-depth maintenance, testing and evaluation, China Eastern said in a reply to the Global Times on Sunday night. 

It carried out targeted flight test verification to ensure that the passenger aircraft put into operation met the safety and airworthiness standards of China's civil aviation regulator, China Eastern said.

Previously, as an emergency measure to ensure safety, the Yunnan branch and its parent company temporarily grounded 223 Boeing 737-800 aircraft, and carried out systemic testing, structural inspection and continuous airworthiness data verification for each aircraft type. 

China Eastern grounded all of its Boeing 737-800 planes after one of them crashed on March 21 in South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, killing all 132 persons on board.

The aircraft involved belonged to the Yunnan subsidiary of China Eastern Airlines and had been in operation for just over six and a half years. The plane was delivered in June 2015.