Charts of the Day: Grim End to China’s 12-Year Airline Safety Streak

Chinese aviation’s longest stretch without a deadly plane crash came to a fiery end Monday afternoon, when China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735 carrying 132 people abruptly lost altitude and plunged into a hill in rural Guangxi.

Around 2:20 p.m., the twin-engine Boeing 737-800 jetliner suddenly dropped from a cruising altitude of around 29,000 feet to 4,400 feet before its radar signal was lost.

No survivors have been found at the crash site near Teng county in South China’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

As crash investigators begin the grim work of determining what caused China’s first deadly airline crash in 12 years, their inquiries are expected to focus on the narrow-body plane’s sudden loss of altitude and the fact flight data suggest it initially accelerated during its steep descent.