Chinese Boeing jet crashes on a mountain with 132 aircraft, no signs of survivor

Beijing, March 21 (Reuters)  China Eastern Airlines' Boeing 737800 (600115.SS), with 132 passengers on domestic flights, crashed in a mountain in southern China  after a sudden drop from cruising altitude on Monday. The media said there were no signs of survivor. The 

  airline said it was deeply saddened by passengers and crew without identifying how many people were killed. 

 Chinese media showed a short highway video footage from a vehicle drive recorder. It appeared to show a jet pigeon on the ground behind a tree at an angle of about 35 degrees from the vertical. Reuters couldn't see the footage right away.

Chinese media showed short highway video footage from a vehicle drive recorder. It appeared to show a jet pigeon on the ground behind a tree at an angle of about 35 degrees from the vertical. Reuters couldn't see the footage right away.

When the plane crashed, it was on its way from a city in the southwestern part of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, to Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong, which borders Hong Kong. 

 China Eastern Airlines said it is investigating the cause of the crash,  which occurred at 31,000 feet per minute, according to the flight tracking website FlightRadar24. The airline said it had set up a hotline for the relatives of the passengers and sent a working group to the scene. Citing China Eastern Airlines, no foreigners are in flight,  China National Television reported.

Media reported that rescue officials said the plane collapsed and caused a fire that destroyed bamboo trees. The People's Daily quoted a state fire department official as saying there were no signs of life in the rubble. 

State media projected a portion of the plane on a mound of injured land. There were no signs of  fire or  belongings. 

According to the  Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) and the airline, the plane with 123 passengers and 9 crew members lost contact with Wuzhou City.

The flight departed Kunming at 1:11 pm. (0511 GMT), FlightRadar24 data showed that it was scheduled to land in Guangzhou at 15:05. (0705 GMT). The aircraft, which Flightradar24 said was 6 years old, flew at 29,100 feet at 06:20 GMT. After 2 minutes and 15 seconds, the data showed that it had descended to 9,075 feet. After 20 seconds, the last tracked altitude was 3,225 feet.  Crashes during the cruising phase  are relatively rare, but this phase accounts for most of the  flight time. Boeing said last year that between 2011 and 2020 worldwide, only 13% of fatal road accidents  occurred during the cruising phase,  28% occurred on the final approach and 26% occurred on landing. I did. 

 "Usually, aircraft are autopiloting during the cruising phase, so it's very difficult to understand what happened," he said. Online meteorological data from showed  good visibility in Wuzhou at the time of the crash and partially cloudy conditions. 

President Xi Jinping urged investigators to identify the cause of the crash as soon as possible, state media CCTV reported. 

 A Boeing spokesperson said: "We are aware of the initial media reports and are working to gather more information." 

 Shares of Boeing Co (BA.N) were down 5% at 1455 GMT. 

Shares in China Eastern Airlines in Hong Kong closed down 6.5 after news of the crash emerged, while its U.S.listed shares slumped 17% in premarket trading. 

China Eastern grounded its fleet of 737800 planes after the crash, state media reported. China Eastern has 109 of the aircraft in its fleet, according to FlightRadar24.

'GOOD RECORDS' 

Aviation Data Provider OAG said this month that  China Eastern Airlines, the state-owned airline, is the world's sixth-largest airline in planned weekly seating capacity. The 737 800 has  good safety records and is the predecessor of the 737 MAX model, which has been grounded in China for over three years after its deadly crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia. 

 China's aviation safety record is one of the best in the world in 10 years. 

“CAAC has very strict security regulations and we have to wait for more details,” said Shukor Yusof, Head of Endau Analytics, a Malaysia-based aviation consultancy. Investigators are looking for airplane flight recorders, flight data recorders, and cockpit voice recorders to shed light on the crash. 

The  Federal Aviation Administration said it was ready to support China's investigation if requested. 

China's flight safety records are good, but less transparent than  countries like the United States and Australia, where regulators have released detailed reports of non-fatal incidents, said Flightglobal's senior Asian officer. Editor Greg Waldron said. 

"There was concern that mainland safety flaws were underreported," he said.  According to the Aviation Safety Network, China's last fatal jet accident occurred in 2010, when the Embraer E190 regional jet, which Henan Airlines flew, crashed as it approached Yi Chun Airport, killing 44 of 96 passengers. 

According to the Aviation Safety Network, in 1994, China Northwest Airlines' Tupolev Tu154 crashed on its way from Xi'An to Guangzhou, killing all 160 people on board in China's worst aviation accident.