The crash of a China Eastern Airlines passenger plane in March that killed 132 people may have been deliberate, according to a US press report.

Flight data indicated someone in the cockpit deliberately crashed the Boeing 737-800, the Wall Street Journal reported today. According to the newspaper, corresponding commands were entered into the control system. The newspaper cited sources familiar with the preliminary findings of the investigators. An unnamed person was quoted as saying, "The plane did as it was told by someone in the cockpit."

China's aviation authority (CAAC) did not comment on the content of the report. The party-affiliated newspaper Global Times, which is often used as a mouthpiece, reported with reference to people involved in the investigations by the CAAC together with the US Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) that they "did not give any relevant information from the investigations to the media “ had.

In April, the Chinese authorities dismissed similar media reports as "rumours" with "false information". The circumstances of the crash, in which the plane fell steeply to the ground, were puzzling from the start. It crashed into a hilly area near the city of Wuzhou in the southern Chinese region of Guangxi, around 300 kilometers west of the metropolis of Guangzhou. The Chinese authorities have not yet pointed out possible technical problems, so investigators have focused on the actions of the pilots, the Wall Street Journal wrote. But someone could also have entered the cockpit and deliberately triggered the crash.