China plane crash: Aircraft 'nose-dived' from 29,000 feet

The crash of a Boeing 737-800 passenger jet in China’s southwest started a fire big enough to be seen from space and forced rescuers to search a rugged, remote mountainside.

The cause is unknown. Flight 5735 was at 29,000 feet (8,800 meters) on Monday afternoon when it went into a dive about an hour into its flight, according to flight-tracking website FlightRadar24.com.

The plane plunged to 7,400 feet (2,200 meters) before regaining about 1,200 feet (360 meters), then dived again. The plane stopped transmitting data 96 seconds after it started to fall.

State media and Chinese regulators gave no indication the pilot reported trouble or other information that might shed light on the cause of the disaster.

Chinese state TV outlets have broadcast footage which appears to show a jet in a near nose-dive to the ground. The footage was captured by a car's dashcam.

The Boeing 737-800 plane dropped thousands of metres in three minutes, flight tracker data showed.

Boeing 737-800s have been flying since 1998 and are widely used. Boeing Co. has sold more than 5,100. They have been involved in 22 accidents that damaged the planes beyond repair and killed 612 people, according to the Aviation Safety Network of the Flight Safety Foundation in the United States.

China Eastern grounded all of its 737-800s after the crash, China’s Transport Ministry said.

Bloomberg reported that while there have been a handful of crashes in which an airliner plunged from cruising altitude, few, if any, fit the extreme profile of the Boeing Co. 737-800 as it pointed steeply toward the ground, according to veteran crash investigators and previous accident reports.

"It's an odd profile," John Cox, an aviation safety consultant and former 737 pilot, said to Bloomberg. "It's hard to get the airplane to do this."