China Eastern Airlines Flight MU5735: air safety experts study video and flight data in search of crash clues

The chilling video captured a scene rarely recorded: a commercial airliner in a near-vertical nosedive, hurtling toward the ground at hundreds of kilometres an hour.

The footage of what appeared to be flight MU5735’s final few moments was shared widely on Chinese social media on Monday, hours after the Boeing 737-800 operated by China Eastern Airlines crashed into a forested hillside in southern Guangxi province, around an hour after taking off in neighbouring Yunnan.