China’s President Xi Jinping has called for a full probe of the commercial airliner of the China Eastern carrying 132 passengers crashed into a mountain in Kunming in southern China yesterday causing a massive fire.
The aeroplane had lost contact with air traffic control and lost thousands of metres in altitude in a mere three minutes.
In Guangzhou, staff assisted loved ones of the 123 passengers and nine crew members aboard the plane, which stopped sending any flight information after dropping 26,000 feet.
An unverified video carried by some Chinese media appeared to show a plane in a vertical nosedive. AFP could not immediately verify its authenticity.
Flight MU5735, which took off from Kunming shortly after 1:00 pm (0500 GMT), “lost airborne contact over Wuzhou” city in the Guangxi region yesterday afternoon, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).
“The company expresses its deep condolences for the passengers and crew members who died in the plane crash,” China Eastern said in a statement, without providing more information.
The disaster prompted an unusually swift public reaction from Xi, who said he was “shocked” and ordered an immediate investigation into its cause, calling for “the absolute safety of the sector and people’s lives”, according to CCTV.
Hundreds of firefighters were dispatched to the scene in Teng county near Wuzhou, state media reported, as nearby villagers rushed to help the rescue effort.
“Everyone went to the mountains,” Tang Min, who runs a restaurant a few kilometres from the crash site, told AFP by telephone.
Flight tracking website FlightRadar24 showed no data for the flight after 2:22 pm.
The tracker showed the plane sharply dropped from an altitude of 29,100 feet to 3,225 feet (8,870 to 982 metres) in three minutes, before flight information ceased.
One villager told a local news site the plane had “completely fallen apart” and he had seen forest areas destroyed by the fire caused by the crash.
The airline acknowledged that some aboard the Boeing 737-800 travelling from the city of Kunming to the southern hub of Guangzhou had died, but did not offer more specifics.
“The company expresses its deep condolences for the passengers and crew members who died in the plane crash,” the airline said in a statement. The cause of the crash is “still under investigation”, it added.
The plane “lost airborne contact over Wuzhou” in the Guangxi region on Monday afternoon, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).