Flight MU5735 Mystery: China Eastern Plane Likely Had Midair Breakup, Evidence Suggests

KEY POINTS

Investigators will reportedly need 10 to 15 days to decode black box found at the site
The second black box, which is the flight data recorder, is yet to be found
All 132 people on board the passenger jet are believed to dead

As searchers scramble the crash site of the China Eastern Airlines Flight MU5735 to find the second black box, new evidence suggests the jetliner may have broken loose before impact.

At least one piece believed to be a part of the Boeing 737-800, found at the crash site, hints at a midair breakup. The confirmation of the piece could offer clues about what led to Monday's crash or shed light on the flight's final moments.

"The questions are: exactly what piece was it and when did it come off?" Jeff Guzzetti, the former chief of accident investigations at the US Federal Aviation Administration, said, according to Bloomberg.

The passenger jet went down Monday with 132 people on board, while en route to Guangzhou after taking off from Kunming, in the southwest. All 132 people on board the jet are feared to be dead.

So far, authorities have confirmed finding one of the black boxes, believed to be the cockpit voice recorder.

An aviation expert said Thursday investigators will need about 10 to 15 days to decode the black box and obtain a preliminary analysis report, China Media Group reported.

The exterior of the black box was severely damaged, but its data storage unit remained relatively intact, head of the aviation safety office of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, Zhu Tao, told reporters Wednesday.

There have been several questions raised about what caused the crash, especially because of the manner in which the plane hit the ground. Flight data revealed the plane plunged out of the sky at close to the speed of sound before slamming into the mountain. The plane was cruising at 29,000 feet when it suddenly nose-dived.

Hu Xiaobing, a professor at the School of Safety Science and Engineering of the Civil Aviation University of China, said the aircraft's crash was reportedly very unusual for it being vertical.

Rescue teams found human tissue debris in the mountains in the southern part of the country, where the plane went down. As of Friday morning, there were no signs of life. The searchers are using hand tools, metal detectors, drones and sniffer dogs to retrieve human remains and debris from the crash.