A China Eastern passenger jet carrying 132 people crashed in southern China on Monday, aviation authorities told. China’s state-run media told the crash led to a fire on a mountain and an unknown number of casualties.
Civil Aviation Administration of China
The Boeing 737 flight from Kunming city to the southern hub of Guangzhou “lost airborne contact over Wuzhou” city in the Guangxi region, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) told in an online statement.
“At present, it has been confirmed that this flight has crashed,” the CAAC told, adding that it had activated its emergency answer and “dispatched a working group to the scene.” The plane was carrying 123 passengers and 9 flight crew members, the CAAC expressed. An earlier state media report had told there were 133 people on board.
State broadcaster CCTV reported that the plane crashed in Teng county around Wuzhou and “caused a mountain fire,” citing the provincial emergency management bureau. The crash site was about 150 miles from the destination of Guangzhou, meaning the aircraft had traveled about 500 miles of its travel. The report counted that recovery teams were dispatched to the scene.
China Eastern MU5735 accident
“We are shocked to learn of the China Eastern MU5735 accident,” Chinese President Xi Jinping was quoted as saying by state broadcaster CCTV. He also called for “all efforts” to be assumed to rescue any survivors and to find out the “cause of the accident as soon as possible.”
One villager informed a local news site that the plane involved in the crash had “completely fallen apart” and he had seen nearby forest areas destroyed by a fire caused when the aircraft crashed onto the mountainside.
- Fears for the fate of the jet spread on Monday afternoon as local media reported that China Eastern flight MU5735 had not arrived as planned in Guangzhou after carrying off from Kunming shortly after 1:00 pm (0500 GMT).
There was no direct reply from China Eastern or Boeing when the companies were contacted by CBS News on Monday. The airline changed its website to black and white colors on Monday afternoon.
Flight tracker FlightRadar24 showed no more data for flight MU5735 after 2:22 pm local time, when it had reached Wuzhou. It showed that the plane had sharply declined from an altitude of 29,100 feet to 3,225 feet in three minutes before flight information stopped.
The plane was delivered to China Eastern by Boeing in June 2015, according to The Associated Press. The twin-engine, single-aisle Boeing 737 is one of the world’s most widely-used passenger jets for short and medium-haul flights.
China Eastern operates various versions of the 737
China Eastern operates various versions of the 737, including the 737-800, which crashed on Monday, and the 737 Max, which was grounded worldwide after two fatal crashes. China’s aviation regulator removed the Max to return service late last year — the last national regulator to do so in a significant travel market.
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China had wanted an enviable air safety record in current years in a country crisscrossed by newly built airports and serviced by new airlines established to match the country’s breakneck growth over the last few decades.
A Henan Airlines flight crashed in northeastern Heilongjiang province in 2010, killing at least 42 out of 92 people on board although the final toll was never established.
It was the last Chinese commercial passenger flight crash that caused civilian casualties. The deadliest Chinese commercial flight crash was a China Northwest Airlines crash in 1994 which killed all 160 onboard.
Most of the passengers onboard the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which disappeared in March 2014 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, were from China.
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