People familiar with the investigation told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that the catastrophic plane crash in March was likely intentional.
China’s civil aviation authority on Wednesday sought to dismiss reporting by The Wall Street Journal after the newspaper said the crash of a China Eastern airliner in March may have been deliberate. The Journal cited people familiar with a preliminary assessment done by U.S. officials, who have access to data from both “black boxes” that were on board flight MU5735 when it went down in southern China, killing 132 people in what was the country’s deadliest air disaster in nearly three decades. In a statement released through the state-run Chinese tabloid the Global Times, the Civil Aviation Administration of China didn’t address the details in the report, but said U.S. investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board assured the agency that they hadn’t disclosed any information about the probe to the press. The U.S. investigators were cooperating with the CAAC, and “continue to provide professional technical support to identify the cause of the accident as needed”, its statement read.
