Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, March 21: A China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 with 132 people on board including 123 passengers and nine crew members, crashed in mountains in southern China on a domestic flight on Monday. While there was no immediate report of casualties, the rescuers said there was no sign of any survivor and looking at the crash site and considering that the plane in its final seconds, was seen in a nosedive at a great speed before it crashed into the mountains, the chances of anyone surviving seemed remote.
The plane was flying from the south-western city of Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, to Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong, bordering Hong Kong. There was no immediate word on the cause of the crash. “Can confirm the plane has crashed,” China Eastern Airlines said in a statement on the country’s worst air tragedy in more than a decade and also gave details of a hotline for relatives of those on board. In 1994, a China North-west Airlines Tupolev Tu-154 flying from Xian to Guangzhou crashed, killing all 160 people on board and ranking as China’s worst-ever air disaster, according to Aviation Safety Network.
The Chinese President Xi Jinping called for investigators to determine the cause of the crash as soon as possible and to ensure “absolute” aviation safety, state broadcaster CCTV reported. He also ordered “all-out rescue efforts” for survivors, with search teams dispatched to the crash site. As of Monday evening, there was no word on the casualties.
A video caught by a local mining company’s security camera showed the plane diving straight into the ground in terrifying speed. The China Civil Aviation Administration said the plane lost contact over Wuzhou city in the Guangxi region and crashed in Teng county near Wuzhou and caused a mountain fire.
Media cited a rescue official as saying the plane had disintegrated and caused a fire destroying bamboo trees. The People’s Daily quoted a provincial firefighting department official as saying there was no sign of life among the scattered debris.
The aircraft, with 123 passengers and nine crew on board, lost contact over the city of Wuzhou, China’s Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) and the airline said. The flight left Kunming at 1:11 p.m. (0511 GMT), FlightRadar24 data showed, and had been due to land in Guangzhou at 3:05 p.m. (0705 GMT).
The plane, which Flightradar24 said was six years old, had been cruising at an altitude 29,100 feet at 0620 GMT. Just over two minutes and 15 seconds later, data showed it had descended to 9,075 feet. In another 20 seconds, its last tracked altitude was 3,225 feet, indicating a vertical descent of 31,000 feet per minute, Flightradar24 said.
Online weather data showed partly cloudy conditions with good visibility in Wuzhou at the time of the crash. 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. 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 three years following fatal crashes in 2018 in Indonesia and 2019 in Ethiopia.
According to 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.