On March 21, 2022, a Boeing 737 carrying 132 people entered a near-vertical dive over southern China. Forty minutes into a routine one-hour flight, it was gone — no mayday call, no distress signal, no warning of any kind. But then something strange happened: for thirty seconds, the plane climbed back up. Join Alice and Zach as they piece together what the flight recorders revealed, what one government has refused to tell the world, and why the truth behind this disaster has now been officially classified as a matter of national security.

SOURCES:

• "China Eastern Crash Lab Data Suggests Intentional Nosedive" — The Wall Street Journal, Andrew Tangel and Alison Sider
• "China Eastern Flight 5735: No Evidence of Mechanical Failure in Preliminary Report" — Reuters
• "Four Years Later: China Eastern Investigators Offer No Answers" — Channel News Asia
• "China's CAAC Invokes National Security to Keep Crash Investigation Secret" — Wikipedia Reference Archive
• "The Mysterious Descent of MU5735: What the Black Boxes Really Told the NTSB" — Simple Flying
• "Pressure on Families: The Non-Disclosure Agreements of China Eastern" — The Kathmandu Post
• "Boeing 737-800 Safety Records and the Silence of Post-Crash Bulletins" — Boeing Newsroom
• "China Eastern MU5735 — Was This a Deliberate Crash?" — Mentour Pilot
• "Black Box Analyzed for Pilots' Actions in China Eastern Airlines Crash" — ABC News, Karson Yiu and Bill Hutchinson
• "China Eastern Crash May Have Been Intentional" — BBC News
• "US Officials Say Evidence Suggests Intentional Crash of China Eastern Jet" — CNN, Nectar Gan
• "China Eastern Airlines Flight 5735 Crashes En Route to Guangzhou" — Flightradar24 Blog, Ian Petchenik
• "Preliminary Report on China Eastern Airlines Flight MU5735 Accident" — Civil Aviation Administration of China

FIND FINAL BOARDING CALL ONLINE:

• Website: finalboardingcallpodcast.com
• Email: finalboardingcallpodcast@gmail.com
• Instagram: @FinalBoardingCallPod
• Facebook: Final Boarding Call

CREDITS: Final Boarding Call is hosted by Alice Stern and Zach Stemas, researched and written by Alice Stern, produced and edited by Alice Stern and Zach Stemas.