According to the Civil Aviation Administration of China, there were 132 persons on board – 123 passengers and 9 crew members – and the jet crashed in a mountainous location near Wuzhou. The wreckage has been discovered in parts. The carrier has established an emergency telephone assistance line for family members, and also extended its deepest condolences to passengers and staff members on board.
A Boeing 737-800 NG airliner operated by China Eastern Airlines Corp. crashed on Monday in Guangxi, China’s southern province.
Near the city of Wuzhou in Teng county in the southern province of Guangxi, a China Eastern Airlines jet nosedived before smashing into a hillside, erupting in a massive fireball, and causing a forest fire visible in NASA satellite photographs shot from space.
RIP Mu5735 plane crash – 133 people on board #planecrash #mu5735 #boeing pic.twitter.com/03TIp7XCoJ
– Hing Kan (@hingkan88) March 21, 2022
On social media, horrifying CCTV footage allegedly shows the jet speeding vertically towards the ground in the seconds leading up to the crash.
According to FlightRadar24, the plane was flying from Kunming, Yunnan province, to Guangzhou, China’s manufacturing capital. At 2.20 p.m., FlightRadar data showed the plane travelling at 29,100 feet. After two minutes, it had dropped to just over 9,000 feet, and 20 seconds later, it had down to just 3,225 feet. According to the data, the vertical descent rate was 31,000 feet per minute, or roughly 350 miles per hour.
The Paper, a Chinese news outlet, presented a video depicting the China Eastern plane plummeting nose-first from the skies before disappearing over a ridge covered in dense forest, which it claimed was caught by a neighboring mining firm.
On its way down, the aircraft in the video appeared to be in good condition, but it was too far away to see any markings that would identify it as a China Eastern plane. The video was reportedly authenticated by Beichen Mining Co., which operates in the area and has installed cameras about a kilometer from the crash scene.
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ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ pic.twitter.com/oBE89PH87F– Timi.Chen (@TTabaoshab) March 21, 2022
The cause of the abrupt descent and crash is unknown, however, aviation experts told MailOnline that it might have been a loss of control event, possibly following a stall of the aircraft at high altitude or a sensory failure in the cockpit. The aircraft lost touch above Wuzhou, according to China’s Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).
The disaster could reignite efforts for China to improve its aviation safety record, which is generally seen as good but purportedly suffers from underreporting of safety violations. China Eastern has announced that all of its Boeing 737-800 jets will be grounded beginning Tuesday.
(Photo: Twitter Dharmendra Kumar)
