Plane Carrying 132 Crashes in China’s Guangxi Region (+Video)
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - China’s aviation authority has confirmed that a China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737 passenger plane has crashed, with 132 people on board, including 123 passengers and 9 crew members.
A China Eastern Airlines Corp. Boeing Co. 737-800NG plane carrying 132 people has crashed in China’s southwestern province of Guangxi.
According to FlightRadar24, China Eastern flight MU5735 was traveling from Kunming to Guangzhou, and radar tracking shows the aircraft taking a steep descent, Bloomberg reported.
Eyewitness videos posted to social media showed a mountainous crash that sparked a fire, with flames and smoke billowing from the scene. CCTV said the forest fire that was triggered by the crash has now been put out.
Contact was lost with the flight over Wuzhou, in the Guangxi region, the authority said. It was scheduled to fly from Kunming to Guangzhou.
The Civil Aviation Administration said it had “activated the emergency mechanism and dispatched a working group to the scene,” according to a translation.
Chinese state media said the crash had caused a mountain fire.
According to Aviation Safety Network’s website, this is the first fatal accident involving a 737-800 jet since Jan. 8, 2020. The China Eastern jet involved was six years old, according to FlightRadar.
The last major incident at China Eastern was in June 2013 when an Embraer SA jet skidded off the runway while landing in Shanghai airport, according to Aviation Safety Network.
The most recent fatal commercial accident in China meanwhile prior to Monday’s was in 2010, involving a Henan Airlines Co. Embraer jet, which killed 44 of the 96 people onboard.
The last fatal crash involving China Eastern was in 2004, when an airliner bound for Shanghai crashed in Inner Mongolia, killing 53 people on board and two people on the ground. That was the worst aviation accident in China in 30 months at the time.
Shares of Boeing fell 6.8% to $179.97 in pre-market US trading. Stock in Shanghai-based China Eastern fell as much as 6.4% in late trading in Hong Kong.