A China Eastern Airlines plane crashed in a remote area in southern China’s Guangxi region. The plane is likely to be completely destroyed.
A China Eastern Airlines plane with 132 people on board has crashed in southern China. As reported by Chinese state television on Monday, the accident happened near Wuzhou in the southern Chinese region of Guangxi. Nothing was initially known about the victims and the circumstances of the disaster.
According to initial information, the plane was en route from Kunming in Yunnan province to Guangzhou in Guangdong province. The machine is likely to have been a six-year-old Boeing 737-800. Flight data showed the Boeing flew at an altitude of more than 8,800 meters after taking off from Kunming in Yunnan province, China News reported on Monday. At 2:19 p.m. local time (7:19 a.m. CET), the plane suddenly dropped. Two minutes later, contact with flight MU5735 was lost.
Rescue teams were assembled and sent to the scene of the accident in Teng County, state media reported. According to the media, an operations manager is said to have reported that the aircraft was completely destroyed.
In a video circulating on the Chinese internet, a high plume of smoke could be seen in the hills from afar. Debris was also shown that local residents claim to have filmed with their cellphones. The authenticity of the videos could not be confirmed at first.
The aviation authority in Beijing confirmed the crash. There were 132 people on board, including nine crew members. In the first reports, there had been talk of 133 inmates.
remote area
The crash happened in a remote and hilly area of Teng County, about 300 kilometers from Guangzhou. A few minutes after the first reports of the accident, the status of the flight was changed to “crashed” in a mobile travel app. The machine was a Boeing 737-800NG. A forest fire broke out after the crash.
China Eastern Airlines’ website has been rendered in black and white, as airlines do after a crash, as a show of respect for the alleged victims.
China’s security record has recently improved significantly
China’s aviation industry has had one of the best safety records in the world over the past decade. According to the Aviation Safety Network, the last fatal plane crash in China occurred in 2010. That year, 44 of the 96 people on board died when a Henan Airlines Embraer E-190 regional jet approached Yichun Airport in poor visibility crashed.
The 737-800 model that crashed Monday has a good safety record and is the predecessor of the 737 MAX, which has been grounded in China for more than three years after deadly crashes in Indonesia in 2018 and Ethiopia in 2019.
In 1994, a China Northwest Airlines Tupolev Tu-154 en route from Xian to Guangzhou crashed after takeoff, killing all 160 people on board and according to the Aviation Safety Network, was the worst air disaster in China ever.
Airline and Boeing stocks down
China Eastern Airlines shares fell 6.5 percent Monday after the crash. The Shanghai-based company is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Shares of aircraft manufacturer Boeing fell 6.8 percent to $ 179.97 in premarket trading on Wall Street.
(APA/Reuters)