China Eastern Airlines 737 crash may have been intentional nosedive

China Eastern Airlines 737 crash may have been intentional nosedive

By Alex Macheras

The China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737 crash that killed all 132 people onboard in March may have been caused deliberately, The Wall Street Journal reported. Data recovered from the plane's black box suggests someone in the cockpit had input controls that sent the plane into a near-vertical descent, The Journal reported, citing people familiar with US officials' preliminary assessment of the disaster.

"The plane did what it was told to do by someone in the cockpit" a person familiar with the report told The Journal.

The Boeing 737-800 plane, which was en route from Kunming to Guangzhou, was cruising at a steady altitude and speed before it started a rapid descent from 29,000 feet on March 12. It crashed minutes later into a mountainside in southern China's Guangxi province.

The pilots did not respond to repeated calls from air traffic controllers and nearby planes during the rapid descent, authorities have said.

The crash was China’s worst-ever air disasters. China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735 was operating an afternoon passenger service with 132 onboard. The aircraft nosedived into a mountain range during the cruise phase of the flight. China’s government confirmed the “accident in a mountain range” in Tengxian, Guangxi, and