China Eastern crash: ‘Foul play at the top of the list’ says air crash investigator

A leading air crash investigator says foul play should be at the top of the list for authorities investigating the crash of China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735, after the flight’s almost vertical descent matched the fate of two previous disasters. Michael Daniel, who worked on investigations into Egypt Air flight 990 and SilkAir flight 185, which were both deliberately crashed by the pilot - according to the US NTSB - also had “very quick and very sudden” dives straight into the ground. “I think that’d be one of the first things I would look at is foul play,” said Daniel. The FAA investigator said the plane had power as it was descending. “So, that kind of rules out a catastrophic type of failure,” he said. “Even with catastrophic failures, a lot of times you’ll see some opportunity for declaring an emergency, or mayday or, or something along those lines. There’s nothing that’s been released here that indicates any kind of distress call. ” Daniel, the senior policy manager at consultancy firm Aviation Insight, said if the horizontal stabiliser, which controls the vertical balance of the aircraft, was stuck, you would still likely see the plan wavering as it descended. But MU5735 fell almost 8000 metres in two minutes, FlightRadar 24 data shows, plunging at such a speed that parts of the plane fell off as it hurtled towards the mountains that surround Wuzhou in southeastern China.<br/>