Aviation expert Sally Gethin joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss the latest on the crash of a Boeing 737-800 NG in China, as investigators look for a reason for the sudden nosedive, and search for any sign of the 132 passengers onboard.

Closing Bell

Investigators Probe Cause of China Plane Crash 

But speaking of turbulence investigators eager to find out what caused Monday's plane crashed in southern China with 132 people on board. No survivors have yet been found and the crash involving one of the world's safest airplanes, the Boeing 737 800 and next generation. Now new questions being raised about one of the most common aircraft in passenger service. So joining me now is aviation expert and analyst Sally Gethin Sally, thank you so much for taking the time. Of course, as we've noted this planning one of the best safety records in the world but did appear to take a nosedive at cruising altitude just shy of 30,000 ft. What is the information that we have so far in real terms is data from a flight tracking app which is able to show uh, the speed and the altitude and just some very basic parameters. I mean really this will rely, the, the answers will really rely on whether the black box recorders, which is the voice recorder and the flight data recorder have been found intact and they will provide the definitive answers. But even so the, that preliminary information that I mentioned is quite interesting. So just as you said, it seemed to drop suddenly from near around 2,029,000 ft. And then it sort of strangely seemed to pause and slightly level off and then Fall again at around eight or 9000 ft and a sharp descent. And that would account for the fact that the aircraft pretty much disintegrated on impact. So let me ask you this salary we haven't seen, unfortunately I haven't seen any survivors. Um Of course as this rescue mission does continue in the search for the black box for more information. Are there any similarities with the information that we do have about those two fatal nosedives that other Boeing planes took which did result in the loss of life of everyone on board both of those aircraft just before the pandemic. Yeah, so you're talking about the 737 max which is an even newer aircraft type than the one that was involved in the incident yesterday. And to be clear they are quite different airplanes and the reason That it was found to have a fault, the 737 Max. And the reason for that is a device called the M. Caste system which is like a fully automated system that overrode the pilots manual controls. Now that system is not fitted to this particular aircraft that came down in china. They are they sound similar but they're actually different. So we can rule out that it would have been the same exactly the same cause on this in this incident than than it was for the previous to that you referred to sally. I think we have to leave it there. But of course we are awaiting more answers. I know you'll be covering this story. Perhaps you can check back in with us as we do get more information that's sally get an aviation expert and analyst