A piece of wreckage of China Eastern's flight MU5735 which crashed in a remote mountainous on Monday with 132 people on board. (Image Credit: PTI)

No survivors have been found as the search continued on Tuesday of the scattered wreckage of a China Eastern plane carrying 132 people that crashed a day earlier in a forested mountainous area in China's worst air disaster in a decade. "Wreckage of the plane was found at the scene, but up until now, none of those aboard the plane with whom contact was lost has been found," state broadcaster CCTV said Tuesday morning, more than 18 hours after the crash.

State media reported all 737-800s in China Eastern's fleet were ordered grounded. Aviation experts said it is unusual to ground an entire fleet of planes unless there is evidence of a problem with the model.

Coincidentally I was on a Boeing 737-800 last evening. Over 7000 of these aircraft have been built and it is literally the spine of several fleets. The 737-800 is marketed as the next generation in the series and it is not the once grounded Max version. The main differentiator between the 737-800 and the Max is the engine type that each one uses. While the 737-800 primarily uses the CFM56, the Max family of aircraft are powered by the CFM LEAP 1B aircraft.

The China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 carrying 132 people which crashed in the mountains of southern China does defy aeronautical knowledge in terms of the odds because these aircraft do not often fall out of the sky at cruise altitude.

According to Flight radar the plane plummets from 29,000 feet to 2900 feet in 90 seconds and then there is a certain return of control from the nose dive before it falls again.

It is believed even this early from the viewing of the Flt MU 5735 flight path map, the captain is trying hard to lift and turn to avoid the aircraft from crashing into the city of Guangzhou. If that is so it was an act of high courage.

It is an awkward situation and not a shred of evidence to make any connection but the only two recent comparable nosedives occurred in the Max 8 Ethiopian and Lion Air crashes in October 2018 and March 2019.

It will be tempting to mix the Max with the Boeing 737-800 but that is unfair. The accusation then was centred on the addition of a software called the Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System which controls the pitch of the nose compounded by Boeing's failure to disclose this new aspect to keeping the aircraft steady as compensation for the relatively more powerful Max engines.

In both crashes the MCAS pushed the nose down, resisting the pilot's efforts to pull out of the 'nosedive.'

In brief, the inaccurate data being given by the 'angle of attack' sensors to the anti-stall computer commanding it to push the nose down prompted the flight into terrain because the drop could not be over-ridden by the pilots. The angle of attack sensor indirectly measures the amount of lift generated by the wings.

Since the MCAS system is not fitted into the 800s the angle of attack being given inaccurate data should not arise. By their sturdiness, fourth-gen aircraft do not suddenly stop flying, not even if they lose an engine. Often, like the legendary Captain Sully's landing of an A320 on the Hudson after both engines flamed out by bird hits, the crisis hit aircraft does not go into a nosedive.

Unless we know more about the last moments through any verbal recordings there is no point attempting to link an angle of attack freeze as a possibility on a 737-800 with less powerful engines but the similarity in the catastrophic dive is more than just worrying.

China has grounded its 600-strong 737 fleet largely because the spectre of the MAX narrative has not completely disappeared, and you cannot take chances despite it being given a clean bill of health.

So, what could have happened? In 1985, a 747SP operating as China Airlines 006 descended 30,000 ft (9,100 m) in under two and a half minutes. The cause was an engine failure where the aircraft stalled when the autopilot in control was attempting to maintain the altitude and wings level. As the speed bled off, the aircraft entered an asymmetric stall. This then developed into a spin.

In 2018 a Qantas Jumbo jet fell for ten long seconds from 30,000 feet after being caught in a cross-vortex of other flights. An aircraft wake is made up of two vortexes spinning in opposite directions. In certain conditions, such vortexes can remain for up to three minutes.

Aviation experts say that hitting a vortex at its peak can cause extreme turbulence or even an unrecoverable induced roll. The vortexes can cause structural damage and lead to a lack of control.

Again, high altitude stalls do occur at a lesser angle of attack than was registered with the Max series. The change in the dynamics of the airflow can trigger a stall.

There is also an outside chance that overspeeding in which the axial compressor exceeds its rotational limits can lead to a failure of the turbine blades and destroy an engine.

There is also an aspect called the coffin corner (Q corner officially) at the operating ceiling known as the Max Mach number. It is very close to the stall speed and interaction between both can lead to a stall or an exceeding of the critical Mach number which will tear at the wings and pitch the aircraft down.

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