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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
World
Abigail O'Leary

Black box from China plane crash FOUND in bid to solve disaster mystery

China Eastern's crashed plane black box has been found after a horror crash killed 132.

The China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 came down in the country's southern province of Guangxi on Monday carrying 132 people.

Emergency personnel are continuing to scour the wreckage but rescuers have found no sign of any survivors.

The retrieved black box is believed to be one of two which could hold vital information.

Information recorded in the black box will now be examined in a bid to establish how the aircraft plummeted from the sky.

Horrifying footage shows the aircraft nosediving to the ground - with one aviation expert saying a technical fault would not have caused such a sudden and rapid manoeuvre.

Sun Shiying, an official with China Eastern Airlines, speaks during a news conference (REUTERS)
Rescuers searching for the black boxes at a plane crash site in Tengxian County, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock)

Flight MU5735 had departed the city of Kunming at 1.11pm local time (5.11am GMT) and was due to arrive in Guangzhou at 3.05pm.

But as it prepared to descend, the aircraft lost altitude and dropped thousands of feet in seconds.

Despite momentarily regaining height at close to 9,000ft, it hit the ground at an estimated 350mph in a hilly woodland area near the city of Wuzhou.

China Eastern has grounded all of its Boeing 737-800s as a precaution.

Neil Hansford said the crash was most likely due to a "human-induced event or brought down by a rogue missile".

The Boeing 737 went into sudden terrifying 350mph dive and smashed into mountainside in China (Twitter/ Local News)
Debris from the doomed MU5735 flight that plummeted from the sky (Twitter/ Local News)

He added: "It is very unlikely the pilot passed out as the non-flying pilot would have been able to very safely take over the flying and land the aircraft.

"Likely scenarios include pilot suicide, aircraft mid-air collision with a military aircraft - that don't have transponders like civil aircrafts.

"My tipping is a human-induced event or brought down by rogue missile. Debris looks like MH117 over Ukraine and the Chinese are providing too much information this time which is uncharacteristic."

Rescuers during the search for the black box that could hold key information (VIA REUTERS)

Neil said the sudden and rapid plummet to earth from 20,000ft in two minutes cannot be blamed on a technical fault, reports news.com.au.

In a statement, the airline - one of the three biggest in China - expressed "its deep condolences for the passengers and crew members who died".

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