the china eastern airlines jet that crashed monday was traveling at close to the speed of sound in the moments before it slammed into a hillside according to a bloomberg news review of flighttrack data such an impact may complicate the task for investigators because it can obliterate evidence and damage a planes data and voice recorders that are designed to withstand most crashesread alsochina plane crash black box found in damaged conditionone of the two black boxes from the crashed china eastern passenger jet has been found an official of chinas aviation regulator told reporters on wednesday however the recovered black box is said to be heavily damaged and retrieveing data for investigation might prove a challengechina plane crash pilots did not answer callspilots of a doomed china eastern airlines corp flight failed to respond to calls from airtraffic controllers after tipping into a deadly nosedive authorities said the jet was traveling at close to the speed of sound just before it slammed into a hillside according to a bloomberg news review ofchinese boeing 737 plane crash in 7 picturesnew delhi a china eastern airlines boeing 737800 with 132 people on board crashed in mountains in southern china on monday after a sudden descent from cruising altitude according to chinese state media there is no signs of survivors here are seven pictures shedding light on the tragic accidentexplainer what is known about the china eastern plane crashbeijing the crash of a boeing 737800 passenger jet in chinas southwest started a fire big enough to be seen from space and forced rescuers to search a rugged remote mountainside one day after the china eastern airlines flight plunged from the sky there are more questions than answers whatone of the two black boxes was located wednesday officials in china saidthe boeing co 737800 was knifing through the air at more than 640 miles 966 kilometers per hour and at times may have exceeded 700 mph according to data from flightradar24 a website that tracks planes the preliminary data indicate it was near the speed of sound said john hansman a massachusetts institute of technology astronautics and aeronautics professor who reviewed bloombergs calculation of the jets speed it was coming down steepsound travels at 761 mph at sea level but slows with altitude as air temperature goes down and is about 663 mph at 35000 feet 10668 metersflight 5735 was flying to guangzhou from kunming with 132 people on board at an altitude of about 29000 feet when it began a sudden descent according to data transmitted by the plane and captured by flightradar24 the jetliner was cruising at about 595 mph before the divethe speed data is consistent with videos appearing to show the jet diving at a steep angle in the moments before impact and indicates that it likely hit the ground with huge force it was an exceedingly highenergy crash said bob mann president of rw mann co consultancy who did not participate in the speed analysis it