China Eastern Airlines Flight MU5735: 132 feared dead after plane crashes into mountain
- There has not yet been official confirmation of any casualties but locals report seeing fires and debris at the site of the crash in Guangxi
- Airline says it will ground its fleet of Boeing 737-800s after the Kunming to Guangzhou flight came down suddenly about an hour after takeoff
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All 132 passengers and crew on board an China Eastern Airlines flight were feared dead on Monday after the plane crashed into a mountain in southern China.
There had been no official confirmation of any casualties seven hours after the crash, raising concerns that there was little chance of finding survivors.
Rescue work swung into operation after the Boeing 737-800 went down near Wuzhou in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, state broadcaster CCTV reported, adding that more than 600 firefighters were being sent to the scene to help local emergency services.
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Boeing 737 plane crashes in China’s southern Guangxi with 132 people on board
Flight MU5735, which was carrying 123 passengers and nine crew members, disappeared en route to Guangzhou after taking off from Kunming in Yunnan province at 1.10pm. After failing to arrive as scheduled at 2.52pm it was marked “out of reach” on Guangzhou airport’s app.
According to VariFlight, a Chinese civil aviation data provider, the plane had been flying at almost 8,900 metres (29,200 feet) before slowing down and losing height at 2.19pm. Three minutes later, when its height was recorded at around 1,300 metres, it disappeared from the radar.
Media reported that debris had been found at the site and local medical teams were sending ambulances to the scene and setting up first-aid stations.
A local villager told online portal Jimu News that the plane had disintegrated and started a fire that had burned down trees and bamboo before local firefighters extinguished most of the blaze.
A truck driver named Li told local media that he had seen a plane come down while he was driving along the highway from Nanning, the capital of Guizhou, to Wuzhou.
“I was about two to three kilometers away, I couldn’t hear the sound but the black smoke was there, it looked like an explosion,” Li said.
He said the whole incident only took a few seconds and by the time he was shooting with his phone, he could only capture smoke.
“It was so horrible, I only just realised later on there were more than 100 people on the flight.”
China Eastern said it would ground all of its Boeing 737-800 jets starting on Tuesday. An emergency telephone assistance line for families was set up and the carrier expressed deep condolences to the families of those onboard, turning its website to black and white.
Both Kunming and Guangzhou airports have also started providing assistance to the families who were waiting there.
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One businessman told Jiemian News that he knew six people, including a 10-year-old boy, who had been travelling to a funeral in Guangzhou on the plane.
CCTV reported that safety checks would be conducted in the aviation sector while President Xi Jinping said he was shocked to learn about the incident and had ordered an immediate emergency response.
Boeing said it was trying to gather more information about the crash, according to CCTV. The US Federal Aviation Administration said it was aware of the reports and was willing to help investigators if asked.
Wang Yanan, editor-in-chief of Aerospace Knowledge magazine, said a deep stall could cause a plane to suddenly plunge downwards.
Deep stalls can be caused by pilot error or turbulence but the cause can only be determined after the black box is found.
“The effect of one accident is huge, but Chinese aviation safety has a good record overall,” he said.
The leading causes of commercial air transport crashes tended to be maintenance issues, pilot error or sabotage, not a manufacturing or design issue, Cowen analysts led by Cai von Rumohr wrote in a note Monday.
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“And for a plane that is seven years old and has been in commercial service since 2015, it seems less likely, although not impossible, that the cause would be a design or manufacturing issue,” the note read.
China’s worst ever domestic air disaster happened in 1994, according to the Aviation Safety Network, when a China Northwest Airlines Tupolev Tu-154 flying from Xian to Guangzhou crashed after take-off, killing all 160 people on board.
The last domestic crash was in 2010, when a plane crashed in Yichun in Heilongjiang province, killing 44.
In 2015, China Eastern Airlines received a “Flight Safety Diamond Award” from the Civil Aviation Administration for flying over 10 million hours safely.
China’s airlines had recorded over 100 million continuous hours of safe flight as of February 19, according to Zhu Tao, an official with the Civil Aviation Administration.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
