It was supposed to be a routine two-hour flight carrying 132 people from one big city to another in southern China.
But just over an hour into its journey, China Eastern Flight MU5735 pitched over into a sudden near-vertical dive.
The Boeing 737-800 jet hurtled to the ground at high speed – thousands of feet a minute – slamming into a hillside in a fiery explosion.
Most of the jet appears to have disintegrated on impact.
But search crews scouring the mountains in Wuzhou, Guangxi province have found charred wreckage, scattered belongings, debris and some human remains.
They’ve also found a piece critical to the puzzle – one of the two so-called black boxes. The cockpit voice recorder was damaged on the outside but its recordings were still intact.
Investigators are hoping it will explain a disaster confounding aviation experts.”
Since this particular plane is specifically designed so that it doesn’t plunge in that way, and since the weather conditions appear to have been normal, the pilots appear to have been psychologically stable and sufficiently trained/experienced, and the plane itself seems to have passed all the requisite tests, one theory is sabotage.
Who and why will have to await the black box recordings.