Flight data suggests China Eastern plane crashed deliberately

The flight data from the black box recovered from the China Eastern plane that crashed nearly two months ago points to the possibility that the alleged crash in which all 132 people on board died may have been intentional.

Since the Boeing 737-800 crash on March 21 in the mountainous Teng County, rumors have spread that the accident could be similar to the tragedy of Germanwings in 2015 when the co-pilot took advantage of the pilot's absence to crash the Airbus A320 into the French Alps killing 144 passengers.

Experts believe "murder-suicide" could explain how the plane ended up on a near-vertical trajectory after finding no technical faults that could have caused the tragedy, Daily Mail reported.

An April report by Chinese regulators found that the plane's two black boxes, the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, which could be vital to solving the case, were "severely damaged," Investigators claimed they would attempt to recover their contents. 

On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal claimed that "someone on board deliberately crashed" the plane, citing U.S. investigators who received all the data for analysis.

"The data show that someone, possibly a pilot or other person who forced his way into the cockpit, sent the Boeing 737-800 into a dive," say sources quoted by the Journal.

The United States defended that conclusion by arguing that Chinese investigators found no problems with the aircraft or flight controls. The pilots did not respond to repeated calls from air traffic controllers or nearby aircraft during the rapid descent, officials added.

"The plane did what someone in the cockpit told it to do," the source continued.

Pilot Yang Hongda, 32, who became a father six months before the crash, is so far the prime suspect. However, investigators are not ruling out that a crew member or passenger could have taken the controls, including co-pilot Zhang Zhengping, 59, a veteran with 32,000 flight hours in a career spanning more than 30 years, according to El Mundo.  

The April report claimed that the plane disintegrated upon impact, forming a 20-meter deep crater, and causing a forest fire. More than 22,000 cubic meters of soil were excavated, and 49,117 pieces of the plane were found, which ended up scattered across the mountain, some of them buried underground.

This was the worst accident in China since 1994, when 160 people died on a China Northwest Airlines flight that crashed after the aircraft broke in two in mid-air.