How Could a Plane Just Nosedive? We Asked Aviation Experts.

The Chinese commercial plane was carrying 132 people and flying at normal speed and altitude when, suddenly, the plane descended on an almost vertical trajectory.

Within two minutes, the Boeing 737-800 plummeted from 29,000 feet and crashed into the mountains of Teng County in southern China’s Guangxi province. No survivors have been found, making the Monday crash potentially the country’s worst commercial aviation disaster in over a decade.

Chances that anyone on board survived appeared exceedingly slim, especially given the steep plunge. While plane accidents are not unheard of, flight data and videos have indicated a rare nosedive that has baffled former pilots and aviation experts.

“Even from a pilot’s point of view, this crash is extremely mystifying—it’s unthinkable,” Minoru Uchida, a former Boeing 767 captain for Japan Airlines, told VICE World News.

“Even if both engines fail, the wings will keep the plane elevated,” said Uchida, who is now a professor of Aviation Technology Crisis Management at the Chiba Institute of Science.

The doomed China Eastern Airlines flight EU5735 is a Boeing 737-800 NG, a workhorse that makes up about 17 percent of the 25,000 passenger planes in service worldwide, the New York Times reported, citing data from aviation data company Cirium. 

China also has one of the world’s best air safety records. The carrier’s last fatal crash was in 2004, when a Bombardier CRJ-200 crashed shortly after takeoff in Inner Mongolia and killed all 53 people on board.

The plane’s black boxes—flight recorders—have yet to be recovered, but the unusual way it crashed has already sparked speculation about its cause, including potential foul play.

Hiroyuki Kobayashi, an aviation safety consultant and former captain for Japan Airlines with 42 years’ experience, said the crash could have been due to a mechanical problem, extreme turbulence, or an attempted suicide.

Uchida, of the Chiba Institute of Science, noted that in videos, the plane appeared to be missing its wings when it fell. They could have been broken off in a collision with other objects or torn by a huge explosion, he said.

“In previous experiments, we’ve seen that the wings need to be bent at a 70 degree angle, at least, to be broken, which is extremely difficult to do,” he said.

Aviation expert Hiroshi Sugie, a former captain for Japan Airlines, compared Monday’s crash to that of Alaska Airlines Flight 261, which similarly nosedived before it crashed into the Pacific Ocean on January 31, 2000. The accident was caused by a jammed horizontal stabilizer and claimed the lives of all 88 on board.

The Boeing 737-800 NG is a commercial aircraft model in the 737 series and has been one of the most reliable jets in its nearly three decades of operation.

It is different from the Boeing 737 MAX, which was grounded worldwide after two crashes less than 5 months apart that killed a total 346 people, in Indonesia in 2018 and Ethiopia in 2019. The model resumed commercial flights in 2020 and 2021 in some jurisdictions after it was recertified.

The Chinese authorities have vowed to thoroughly investigate the cause of the crash and drawn no conclusions yet. 

As the search at the crash site continued on Tuesday, rescuers have recovered identity cards, phones and other personal items but have not reported finding any survivors or bodies.

Sugie, the former captain for Japan Airlines, said even finding human remains could be difficult given the immense impact the plane underwent.

“If you’re falling from extreme heights with that much speed, it’s near impossible to find survivors intact—it’ll take a few days to find remains,” he told VICE World News. 

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