Beijing, March 21 (Reuters) – China Eastern Airlines (600115SS) The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said Monday that a jet with 132 people on board was en route from Kunming to Guangzhou when it crashed in the mountains of southern China on Monday.
The Jet plane involved in the crash was a Boeing 737 and the death toll was not immediately known, state broadcast CCTV reported. Rescue operations were underway at the scene. There is no information on the cause of the accident.
According to Flight Trader 24, the aircraft was a 6-year-old 737-800.
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The CAAC said the plane lost contact with the city of Wujo. There were 123 passengers and nine crew on board. Earlier, state media reported that there were 133 people on board.
“The CAAC has activated an emergency mechanism and sent a task force to the scene,” it said in a statement.
The media reported, citing a rescue officer, that the plane was completely wrecked. The bamboo and trees were burned before the fire was extinguished by the accident.
The plane took off from the southwestern city of Kunming at 1:11 pm (0511 GMT), FlightRadar24 data showed, and landed at 3:05 pm (0705 GMT) on the south coast of Guangzhou.
The plane was flying at 29,100 feet at 0620 GMT, according to FlightRadar24 data. After two minutes and 15 seconds, the next data available shows that it has dropped to 9,075 feet. In another 20 seconds, its last observed height was 3,225 feet.
China Eastern Airlines’ website was later presented in black and white, which airlines do in response to the crash as a sign of respect for the victims. Boeing China’s website also went black and white.
Shares of Boeing (BA.N) Pre-market trading was down 6.4% at $ 180.44. Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
OAG, an aviation data provider, said this month that state-owned China Eastern Airlines was the sixth largest in the world in planned weekly seating capacity and the largest in China.
Despite strict restrictions on international flights, it has a relatively strong performance in the domestic market during corona virus outbreaks, the OAG said.
The safety record of China’s aviation sector over the past decade is one of the best in the world.
According to the Aviation Safety Network, China’s deadliest jet crash was in 2010, when 44 of the 96 people on board crashed as Henan Airlines’ Embraer E-190 regional jet approached the Yichun airport with low visibility.
The 737-800 model that crashed on Monday has a good safety record and is the precursor to the 737 MAX model that landed in China more than three years after the catastrophic accidents in Indonesia in 2018 and Ethiopia in 2019.
In 1994, China’s Northwest Airlines Tupolev Tu – 154, flying from Xian to Guangzhou, crashed after takeoff, killing all 160 people on board and being ranked as China’s worst aviation disaster, according to the Air Defense Network.
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Reported by Jamie Fried in Beijing Newsroom and Sydney; Written by Robert Brussel; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore
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