A China Eastern Boeing 737-800 with 132 people on board went into a near-vertical dive and crashed in a remote mountainous area of southern China on Monday. It was the country’s worst air disaster in nearly a decade. Investigators are attempting to piece together the cause of the crash. Here’s what we know so far:
What happened?
Flight MU5735 from Kunming was cruising at about 29,000 feet (8,839 meters) and was about 100 miles from its destination in Guangzhou, Southern China, when it suddenly went into a steep descent. Over the next 1 minute and 35 seconds the plane lost altitude in a near vertical dive, which took it almost to the speed of sound, until it slammed into a hillside. All 132 people on board, including nine crew members, are presumed dead.
