China Eastern Airlines plane with 132 on board crashes in China

Beijing

A CHINA Eastern Airlines passenger jet with 132 people on board crashed in the mountains of southern China on Monday (Mar 21) while on a flight from the city of Kunming to Guangzhou.

The jet involved in the accident was a Boeing 737 aircraft and the number of casualties was not immediately known, state broadcaster CCTV said. Rescue services were on their way to the scene, it said. There was no word on the cause of the crash.

The plane was a 6-year-old 737-800 aircraft, according to Flightradar24.

"Can confirm the plane has crashed," China Eastern Airlines said in a statement, in which it also gave details of a hotline for relatives of those on board.

The aircraft, with 123 passengers and 9 crew on board, lost contact over the city of Wuzhou, China's Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) and the airline said.

CAAC said an emergency team had been sent to the crash site.

Media cited a rescue official as saying the plane had completely disintegrated. A fire sparked by the crash destroyed bamboo and trees before being put out, media reported. China Eastern said it will ground all of its Boeing 737-800 jets starting from Tuesday. An emergency telephone assistance line for families was set up and the carrier expressed deep condolences to passengers and crew members onboard.

The flight departed the southwestern city of Kunming at 1.11 pm (0511 GMT), FlightRadar24 data showed, and had been due to land in Guangzhou, on the south coast, at 3.05 pm (0705 GMT).

The plane had been cruising at an altitude 29,100 feet at 0620 GMT, according to FlightRadar24 data. Just over 2 minutes and 15 seconds later, the next available data showed it had descended to 9,075 feet. In another 20 seconds, its last tracked altitude was 3,225 feet.

The website of China Eastern Airlines was later presented in black and white, which airlines do in response to a crash as a sign of respect for the assumed victims. Boeing China's website also switched to black and white.

Shares of Boeing Co were down 6.4 per cent at US$180.44 in premarket trade. Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Shares in China Eastern Airlines in Hong Kong closed down 6.5 per cent after news of the crash broke, while its onshore-listed shares ended up 2.2 per cent.

Aviation data provider OAG said this month that state-owned China Eastern Airlines was the world's sixth-largest by scheduled weekly seat capacity and the biggest in China.

China has had a relatively strong domestic aviation market during the coronavirus pandemic despite tight curbs on international flights.

The safety record of China's airline industry has been among the best in the world over the past decade.

According to the Aviation Safety Network, China's last fatal jet accident was in 2010, when 44 of 96 people on board were killed when an Embraer E-190 regional jet flown by Henan Airlines crashed on approach to Yichun Airport in low visibility.

The 737-800 model that crashed on Monday has a good safety record and is the predecessor to the 737 MAX model that has been grounded in China for more than 3 years following fatal crashes in 2018 in Indonesia and 2019 in Ethiopia.

In 1994, a China Northwest Airlines Tupolev Tu-154 flying from Xi'an to Guangzhou was destroyed in an accident after take-off, killing all 160 people on board and ranking as China's worst-ever air disaster, according to the Aviation Safety Network. REUTERS, BLOOMBERG