The Boeing 737 was flying from the city of Kunming to the metropolis of Guangzhou, but “lost contact when it was flying over the city of Wuzhou” in the mountainous region of Guangxi, according to a CAAC statement.
“At this time, it is confirmed that the flight has crashed,” the CAAC said, adding that it had activated its emergency response and sent a rescue team to the scene.
The device was carrying 123 passengers and 9 crew members, a total of 132 people, although Chinese media had previously mentioned 133 people on board.
The Boeing 737 reportedly crashed in a rural area near that city, “starting a fire,” a reporter on Chinese television CCTV said, citing the local emergency coordination office.
“Completely Destroyed”
A resident of the area told a local news website that the plane involved in the crash had been “completely destroyed” and that he had seen nearby forest areas destroyed by fire caused by the plane crashing into the mountainside. .
Fears arose on Monday afternoon when local media reported that China Eastern flight MU5735 had failed to arrive in Guangzhou as scheduled after taking off from Kunming shortly after 1:00 p.m. (05:00 GMT).
The China Eastern airline, consulted by AFP, has not yet issued any comment on the matter, although on Monday afternoon, it had changed the colors of its website to black and white.
“The exact place of the accident was Langnan township in Teng county,” a local official told AFP, without offering further details.
The FlightRadar24 flight tracker did not offer any more data for flight MU5735 after 2:22 p.m. local time, when it arrived in Wuzhou. The website shows how the plane had dropped sharply from an altitude of 29,100 feet to 3,225 feet in the span of three minutes, before the flight information stopped.
In recent years, China has maintained good aviation safety standards, in a country teeming with newly built airports and covered by new airlines established to cater to the country’s breakneck growth in recent decades.
The last major plane crash in China was in August 2010, with an unconfirmed balance of 42 victims.
It was the latest accident involving a Chinese commercial passenger flight to cause civilian casualties.
The deadliest Chinese commercial flight accident was a China Northwest Airlines crash in 1994 in which all 160 people on board died.
Most of the passengers aboard Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which disappeared in March 2014 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, were from China.