A plane belonging to the Chinese airline China Eastern Airlines has crashed.
(Photo: dpa)
Beijing A Chinese Eastern Airlines plane with 132 on board has crashed in southern China. As reported by Chinese state television on Monday, the accident happened near Wuzhou in the southern Chinese region of Guangxi. Nothing was initially known about the victims and the circumstances of the accident.
According to the first information, the aircraft with the flight number MU5735 was on its way from Kunming in the Yunnan province to Guangzhou in the Guangdong province. Rescue teams were assembled and sent to the scene of the accident in Teng County, state media reported.
The machine apparently crashed suddenly from a great height. Flight data showed the Boeing 737 had flown at an altitude of more than 8,800 meters since takeoff from Kunming, China News reported on Monday. At 2:19 p.m. local time (7:19 a.m. CET), the plane suddenly dropped. Two minutes later, contact with flight MU5735 was lost.
In a video circulating on the Chinese internet, a high plume of smoke could be seen in the hills from a distance. Debris was also shown that local residents claim to have filmed with their cellphones. The authenticity of the videos could not be confirmed at first.
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Villagers reported the machine was “completely destroyed.” The forest fire has now been extinguished, eyewitnesses reported on Monday, according to the Jimu Xinwen news site.
Firefighters and rescue teams, including local residents, were at the crash site in Teng County, south China’s Guangxi region. At first, nothing was known about the fate of the occupants of the China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737. The airline changed the color to gray on its website to express its sadness.
The aviation authority in Beijing confirmed the crash. There were 132 people on board, including nine crew members. In the first reports, there had been talk of 133 inmates.
The crash happened in a remote and hilly area of Teng County, about 300 kilometers from Guangzhou. A few minutes after the first reports of the accident, the status of the flight was changed to “crashed” in a mobile travel app. The machine was a Boeing 737-800NG. A forest fire developed after the crash.