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A China Eastern Airlines plane that crashed in March, killing 132 people, appears to have been deliberately flown into the mountainside below by someone at the controls.
According to an analysis of the black box flight recorders discovered among the wreckage by US officials, deliberate input from the cockpit caused the Boeing 737-800 plane to crash.
An unnamed source said:
“The plane did what it was told to do by someone in the cockpit.”
The Eastern plane was cruising at a constant altitude and speed before plummeting more than 20,000 feet in less than a minute and crashing near the city of Wuzhou in Guangxi province.
Chinese investigators have led the crash investigation, but US officials are involved because the plane was manufactured in the United States.
What did the black box of the China Eastern jet reveal?
Data from a black box recovered near the crash site near Wuzhou in the southern province of Guangxi showed that controls in the cockpit sent the plane into a deadly dive.
Mechanical and flight control issues are yet to be cited by Chinese authorities in the March 21 crash that killed everyone on board.
The news has shifted the investigation's focus to the pilot's actions, but it's also possible that someone else on the plane stormed into the cockpit and caused the crash.
Air safety regulators and Boeing officials have not released any service bulletins or directions in response to the crash, which would be issued if authorities considered it necessary to alert airlines regarding technical difficulties. However, US investigators do not have access to all of the information that their Chinese counterparts have.
A preliminary readout of the China Eastern plane's flight data recorder revealed deliberate pilot inputs prior to the tragedy in April. Officials from China Eastern Airlines claimed they had discovered no evidence that the aircraft had any difficulties prior to the crash.
However, the pilots' health and financial situation were both good.
China Eastern said:
“Any unofficial speculation may interfere with the accident investigation and affect the real progress of the global air transport industry.”
The airline also denied a suspected cockpit infiltration, citing material from a March 25 news conference in which Chinese officials stated that no emergency notice had been sent ahead of time.
Vice Premier Liu He of China has been tasked with supervising the inquiry China's Civil Aviation Administration will conduct.
