A Chinese passenger airliner crashed on a wooded slope in southern China, killing all 132 people on board.
The China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 was on its way from Kunming to Guangzhou when it crashed and caught fire in Guangxi province.
The number of people killed and the cause of the disaster are still unknown. No survivors have been found, according to rescuers.
The last significant disaster occurred 12 years ago, and Chinese airlines have a strong safety record.
In China, President Xi Jinping has ordered a swift inquiry into the incident to establish the reason. All of China Eastern Airlines’ 737s have apparently been grounded.
The jet dropped height quickly from its cruise altitude before impacting the ground, according to flight-tracking data.
There is around 600 emergency personnel at the collision site, according to reports. Firefighters were the first on the site, and they were able to put out a flame in the hills triggered by the collision.
Local villagers’ footage, which was posted on Chinese social media and shown by official media, showed flames and smoke from the accident, as well as plane debris on the ground.
Following a series of mishaps in the 1990s, China’s air safety and aviation regulations have dramatically improved in recent decades, and catastrophes like this are now very rare.
The country’s most recent big aviation tragedy occurred in August 2010, when a flight from Harbin crashed in foggy weather near north-east Yichun, killing 42 people.
Air disasters timeline
People seeking information about those on board should call a hotline established by China Eastern. In an apparent expression of sadness, it has greyed out its emblem on Weibo and altered its website to black and white.
Along with China Southern and Air China, the state-owned carrier is one of China’s main three airlines.
China’s Civil Aviation Administration said that investigators had been called to the location.
Flight MU5735 was due to depart Kunming at 13:11 local time (05:11 GMT) and arrive in Guangzhou at 15:05.
According to flight monitoring services, the jet had been in the air for a little over an hour and was approaching its destination when it crashed in Wuzhou, a lush, mountainous region prone to inclement weather as China begins its annual flood season.
The weather was gloomy at the time of the incident, although visibility was said to be decent.
According to flight tracker data, the plane plunged hundreds of meters in three minutes.
The plane was traveling at 29,100 feet, according to FlightRadar24 data, but it was reported at 9,075 feet two minutes and 15 seconds later. According to the last available information, the flight terminated at 14:22 local time, at a height of 3,225 feet.
According to monitoring websites, the Boeing 737-800 airliner was seven years old. It’s the forerunner to the Boeing 737 Max jets that were involved in tragic incidents in Indonesia in 2018 and Ethiopia in 2019.
Following the crashes, China outlawed the model.
“We are aware of the early media reports and are working to obtain additional information,” Boeing said in a statement about the MU5735 incident.
