The doomed China Eastern Boeing 737 didn't suffer a technical fault but crashed due to 'human activity', an expert has claimed in one chilling theory.
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.
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.
Neil Hansford said the crash was most likely due to a "human-induced event or brought down by a rogue missile".
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."
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.
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.
In a statement, the airline - one of the three biggest in China - expressed "its deep condolences for the passengers and crew members who died".
Aviation expert Sally Gethin said the circumstances behind Monday's crash are different to those leading up to the Boeing 737 MAX crashes of the Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, which occurred just months apart.
A total of 346 people were killed after the planes' MCAS, an inbuilt flight stabilisation system, malfunctioned.
Ms Gethin told The Sun the 737-800 has a "particularly good safety record" but the grounding of the model - of which there are thousands - suggests the airline are "concerned".
