MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

China Eastern airliner brought down intentionally from within, WSJ says

Chinese authorities insist no information has been officially released

Investigators from the United States probing the March 21 accident of a China Eastern Boeing 737-800 airliner in which all 132 occupants lost their lives have hinted someone in the cockpit intentionally caused the crash.

Black box data from China Eastern flight MU5735 would prove the catastrophe was man-provoked, according to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), citing anonymous sources who allegedly detailed how the maneuver that made the plane descend almost vertically for two minutes until it crashed in the Chinese city of Tengxian was intentional.

“The plane did what someone in the cockpit told it to do,” the unidentified source reportedly said. The WSJ also reported that Chinese investigators had not found any technical problems in the US-built aircraft. However, Chinese authorities have issued a statement stressing that neither Chinese nor US authorities had leaked any information about the investigation to any media outlet.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China underlined that the investigation is still underway, focusing on identification, classification, and inspection of debris, flight data analysis, and experimental verification.

State censorship has already come out against those who commented on the information, blocking access to the news mentioning the hypothesis and the tags under which they were discussed on social media, displaying a message specifying that they “violate the laws and regulations” of the country.