Cathay Pacific Flight 700Z bombing

Cathay Pacific Flight 700Z was a flight from Singapore to Hong Kong. Cathay Pacific used a Convair CV-880 aircraft that crashed in South Vietnam on the afternoon of 15 June 1972. The cause was determined to have been an explosive device, likely located within the passenger cabin. A suspect in the bombing was acquitted at trial. Flight 700Z originated from Singapore International Airport (now the Paya Lebar Air Base) and had a stopover at Bangkok's Don Mueang International Airport, with the final destination being Hong Kong's Kai Tak Airport. At 0542 hours GMT (1242 local time), the flight made contact with Saigon ACC. At 0544, the crew made a routine transmission updating the progress of their route, adding that they would expect to reach their next waypoint by 0606 GMT. This was the last transmission received from the flight. Investigation The wreckage was located in "lightly wooded" terrain, still burning, not long after Saigon ACC lost contact. Although two bodies were retrieved almost immediately, the presence of hostile forces nearby made it very difficult to examine the wreckage in depth. The spread of debris suggested that the airplane had broken into three large sections, with the breakpoints almost exactly along the front and rear of the wingbox, prior to hitting the ground, and the relative closeness of these sections suggested that this breakup had occurred at a low altitude. Other debris, including two engines and the horizontal stabilizer, could be seen further away from helicopters, but could not be reached on foot due to war activity. The aircraft's flight data recorder was recovered and read; it showed that the airplane was flying on course at at a speed of until 0559 GMT (1259 local time), at which point the recorded data became nonsensical for 30 seconds before stopping entirely. The aircraft was not equipped with a cockpit voice recorder.