Sudden human involvement in the flight caused China Eastern’s flight to sink almost vertically into the mountains of southern China in March, killing all 132 passengers on board, according to preliminary findings by US authorities investigating the crash.
The findings come in part from information recovered from a Boeing 737 flight data recorder known as a “black box,” according to The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources familiar with the U.S. investigation.
“The plane did what it was told to do in the cockpit,” one man told the Journal.
Chinese officials in charge of the crash investigation have not identified any obvious mechanical or flight problems with the plane. And air regulators and Boeing itself are not working on any new safety directives or crash warnings.
The China Eastern flight was aboard the Boeing 737-800, a widely used aircraft with one of the best performance in commercial aviation.
“This type of vertical diving, without a radio call from any type of crew, can clearly show the human activity to do so,” an aviation safety consultant and former member of the National Transportation Safety Board told FlightGlobal (NTSB) John Goglia in April. “No one can come up with a mechanical failure regime to make the plane behave the way it did.”
Taken together, these findings suggest that one of the pilots of the plane may have caused a nose dive or someone broke into the cockpit and did so, although official statements from the investigation emphasize that the investigation is still ongoing.
The Chinese Civil Aviation Authority has not yet determined the ultimate cause of the crash, and China Eastern said earlier that the pilot piloting the plane was in good physical, emotional and financial health.
Chinese officials also said that the flight to China Eastern did not send any pre-crash disaster signals and that communications between the ship and air traffic control did not show anything unusual before the crash, which calls into question the cockpit breach.
They have completed an initial report to investigate the crash, but have not released its full content.
No survivors were found at the crash site, and the plane’s black box was found a few meters underground.
The investigation is Boeing’s latest safety investigation, after a faulty flight control system led to numerous fatal crashes aboard the Boeing 737 MAX, the successor to the 737-800.
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