A China Eastern Boeing 737 carrying 132 people crashed in remote mountains in southern China on Monday after plummeting 30,000 feet, officials said.
The fiery crash occurred near the city of Wuzhou in the southern province of Guangxi around 2:30 p.m. local time, the Civil Aviation Administration of China said in a statement.
There was no immediate word on the numbers of dead and injured, but the airline said it deeply mourned those on board.
“The company expresses its sorrowful condolences to the passengers and crew members who died in this plane crash,” the airline said in a statement, CNN reported.
Flight 5735 was carrying 123 passengers and nine crew members, according to officials. None of the passengers were foreigners, the airline said.
Rescue crews were on scene and fire crews were trying to control a mountainside blaze ignited by the crash, the CAAC said.
Satellite data from NASA showed a massive fire in the vicinity of where the plane went down at the time of the crash.
The aftermath of the fiery crash in the mountains southern China on Monday, March 21, 2022. Twitter
China state media reports that 132 people were on the airplane that crashed on March 21. TwitterState media cited a rescue official as saying the plane had completely disintegrated upon impact.
There was no immediate word on the cause of the crash.
The flight had taken off from the city of Kunming just after 1 p.m and was en route to Guangzhou.
Contact with the plane was lost at about 2:15 p.m. local time, the Guangxi provincial emergency management department said.
The plane had been traveling at around 30,000 feet when it suddenly entered a deep dive just after 2:20 p.m., according to data from flight-tracking website FlightRadar24.com.
The data suggests the plane crashed within a minute and a half.
The weather in Wuzhou at the time of the crash was partly cloudy with good visibility.
China Eastern, the country’s second-largest airline, said the cause of the crash was under investigation and the airline has set up a hotline for relatives of those on board.
The airline has since changed its website color to black and white, which airlines do in response to a crash as a sign of respect for the assumed victims.
The plane that crashed was a 6-year-old 737-800 aircraft, according to Flightradar24.
Surveillance video allegedly shows the plane nosedive from 30,000 feet. Newsflare
Smoke billows from the crash site in the Chinese mountains. Twitter
Emergency personnel prepare to travel to the site of a plane crash near Wuzhou in southwestern China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. AP
Ambulances arrive at the scene after a China Eastern plane reportedly crashed in Teng County in Wuzhou City, Guangxi province. AFPTV/AFP via Getty ImagesThe 737-800 model has a good safety record and is the predecessor to the 737 MAX model that has been grounded in China for more than three years following fatal crashes in 2018 in Indonesia and 2019 in Ethiopia.
The deadliest crash involving a Boeing 737-800 was in January 2020 when Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard accidentally shot down a Ukraine International Airlines flight, killing all 176 people on board.
China’s last deadly crash of a civilian jetliner was in 2010.
The country has one of the best air safety records in the world.
With Post wires
