China plane crash: Malfunction to terror attack being probed and what we know about the pilots

Beijing, Mar 24: A Chinese Eastern Boeing 737-800 with 132 on board crashed in China on Monday. Currently investigators are trying to piece together the cause of the crash.

The plane crash took place in the southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on Monday, the regional emergency management department said. The Boeing 737 aircraft of China Eastern Airlines, which flew from Kunming to Guangzhou, crashed in Tengxian County in the city of Wuzhou, causing a fire on the mountains.

The 132 persons included 123 passengers and nine crew members, the Civil Aviation Administration of China said on its website.

While it is too early to predict what happened at this juncture, the possibilities range from equipment malfunction, bad weather, pilot illness or suicide to a terrorist attack. At this point the investigators are ruling out nothing.

The cockpit recorder which should have captured the last conversation of the pilots has been sent for analysis. The same is likely to take sometime as it has been badly damaged.

Chinese media reports said that the pilots at the control included one of China's most experienced commercial aviators and a much younger captain with a family pedigree. The senior pilot had 31,769 flying hours while in the case of the captain it was 6,709. The second co-pilot had 556 hours of flying hours experience. All of them had good performance records and stable family conditions, the Chinese media also reported.