China plane crash: Experts puzzled by sudden nosedive of ‘safest’ Boeing 737 jet

The Chinese plane that crashed yesterday afternoon was considered one of the safest in the world, according to aviation experts.

The Boeing 737-800 model, flown by China Eastern Airlines, was carrying 132 people from Kunming to Ghangzhou cities when it suddenly plunged into a hillside in the south of the country. .

Tragically, no survivors have yet been found by rescuers. Chinese President Xi Jinping has launched a major investigation to determine the cause of the crash. China Eastern’s entire fleet of Boeing 737-800s have been grounded in the meantime.

Aviation experts are baffled by what could have happened to the jet, which was less than seven years old. It is a model of plane with a crash rate of 0.24 per million flights - as calculated by aviation safety website AirSafe.

“The Boeing 737-800 series has had an excellent safety record since the 1990s and there are thousands of this fleet around the world,” Flight Safety Foundation CEO Hassan Shahidi tells Euronews Travel.

“The unusual abrupt nosedive of the airplane from cruise altitude is very puzzling. The investigators will be looking into all aspects and it is too early to speculate about the cause of this crash.”

Locating the flight data recorder or ‘black box’, the voice data recorder, and listening to the last air traffic control communications, will be crucial pieces in uncovering what went wrong, he adds.

The incident is a devastating departure from form for China’s airlines, too. The country’s last fatal plane accident was in 2010, when 44 people were killed on approach to Yichun Airport.

In cruise mode, as MH5735 was believed to be, planes are typically on autopilot, meaning “it is very difficult to fathom what happened,” Chinese aviation expert Li Xiaojin told