Chinese recovery teams comb debris of crashed passenger jet

Chinese recovery teams on Tuesday picked through the debris of a crashed China Eastern jet after it inexplicably plummeted from the sky into a mountainside with 132 people on board.

Hopes of finding any survivors had all but vanished nearly a day after the Boeing 737-800 passenger jet nosedived into the mountain — likely making it China’s deadliest air crash in nearly three decades.

Questions mounted over the cause of the crash, which saw the stricken jet drop 20,000 feet (6096 metres) in just over a minute before ploughing into rugged terrain in southern China on Monday afternoon.