In March the world was pretty stunned to learn about a 737-800 series Boeing aircraft went into an almost vertical descent into the mountains in China. This led to some speculation that the issue that has been a huge problem for the 737 Max, may be spread across different variants. This data (from the WSJ) seems to put those thoughts to rest, which is good news for Boeing.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t any other data released along with this statement to shed more light exactly what happened. Having flown a couple of Boeing products for a few years, I can say that to get the nose pointed that far down, and hold it there, while inevitably picking up speed, would take more than a little effort. That assumes that it was done manually, and not the result of a malfunctioning horizontal stabilizer. If it was a malfunction though, that should have been evident in the recovered data.

So, for now, it looks like we are just left to wonder what happened with the pilots on the flight deck.