According to investigators from the US, they believe that the China Eastern flight MU5375 that crashed in March was deliberately crashed by someone on board, as reported by the Wall Street Journal yesterday (17 May).
The flight was traveling on 21 March from Kunming to Guangzhou when it crashed from an altitude of 29,000 feet into the mountains, resulting in all 132 people on board the plane perishing.
Flight information from the black box flight data recorders of the crashed plane was recovered from the site and sent to the US for analysis.
The resulting information that was extracted from the black box, indicated that someone had input orders to send the plane into a nosedive – with the someone being possibly a pilot or another person(s) who had forced their way into the cockpit.
The Wall Street Journal reported that “the plane did what it was told to do by someone in the cockpit”.
The US National Transportation Safety Board and Boeing have so far declined to comment on the investigation.
According to China’s Civil Aviation Administration (CAAC), they said that investigators have found no evidence of “anything abnormal”.
They added that safety requirements were met prior to takeoff and no dangerous goods were on board the flight, and the weather was not adverse.
The crash of MU6375 is China’s deadliest in about 30 years.