A China Eastern Airlines plane carrying 132 people, 123 passengers and nine crew – crashed Monday in the southwestern province of Guangxi, the country’s civil aviation officials said.
Visuals of the crash circulated on social media showed a massive fire raging on a mountainside. There is no immediate information on casualties. Emergency and rescue teams have been scrambled and are en route.
Initial media reports say there are ‘no signs of survivors’.
President Xi Jinping is ‘shocked’ and has ordered an investigation, “We are shocked to learn of the China Eastern U5735 accident.”
The flight data recorders (Black Box) which will help investigators understand what happened have not yet been recovered.
According to flight-tracking service FlightRadar24, China Eastern flight MU5735 was traveling from Kunming to Guangzhou. Radar showed the aircraft making a steep descent and contact was lost over Wuzhou city, authorities said.
“At present, it has been confirmed this flight has crashed. The CAAC (Civil Aviation Administration of China) has activated the emergency mechanism and sent a working group to the scene,” the aviation body said in a statement.
The flight departed the southwestern city of Kunming at 1.11 pm (10.41 am India time), FlightRadar24 data showed. Tracking stopped at 2.22 pm (11.52 am India time).
At the time the plane was at an altitude of 3,225 feet and traveling at 376 knots per hour. It was to land in Guangzhou at 3.05 p.m. (12.35 pm India time).
The aircraft that crashed was delivered to China Eastern from Boeing in June 2015 and had been flying for more than six years. China Eastern said it will ground all its Boeing 737-800 jets starting Tuesday.
China’s airline industry safety record has been among the world’s best over the past decade. The last fatal jet accident was in 2010, reports said. A plane carrying 96 people crashed due to low visibility, killing 44.
