A China Eastern Boeing 737-800 crashed today in south China’s Guangxi province with 132 people on board in the worst civil air disaster recorded in the Asian country since 2010.
The plane, which carried out the route between the cities of Kunming (southwest) and Guangzhou (southeast) crashed with 123 passengers and 9 crew members on board, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said in a statement published several hours after the accident.
At first, state television CCTV reported that there were 133 people on board flight MU5735, which took off at 1:15 p.m. local time (05:15 GMT) before crashing to the ground in the Guangxi region (south) without for the moment details are not known or if there are survivors.
There is also no information about what would have caused the accident: “The precise nature of the incident remains undetermined.”CCTV reported without giving further details.
The last air tragedy reported by Chinese aviation was on August 24, 2010.when a Henan Airlines flight crashed in the city of Yichun in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, killing 44 people.
Nevertheless, In 2016, five people died in another accident in Shanghai (east), that of a Joyair company seaplane that was making its inaugural flight with ten people on board.
The official Global Times newspaper was quick to recall that, as of February, China had exceeded 100 million safe flight hours, the best mark in the country’s history.
Rescue work underway
Rescue teams sent from different parts of southern China went to the site to start – once the fire was extinguished – the search work, although with little prospect of finding survivors, given the height from which the device fell to the ground, according to images spread on social networks.
The information available at the moment indicates that more than 650 troops have been deployed in the area – in the Teng county of the city of Wuzhou, in Guangxi – as well as 23 fire trucks.
Rescue teams managed to put out the fire around 5:00 p.m. local time (09:00 GMT), according to the state chain.
After the event, Chinese President Xi Jinping said he felt “shocked”, and the State (Executive) Council formed a committee to investigate both the causes of the accident “as soon as possible” and other possible safety problems in the transportation sector. civil aviation with the aim of “ensuring the absolute safety of aviation operations”.
The flight had an expected duration of one hour and forty minutes, in which the device, almost seven years old, had to travel the 1,357 kilometers that separate Kunming from Canton.
According to data from the FlightRadar24 flight tracking portal, the aircraft was flying at 2:19 p.m. local time (06:19 GMT) at an altitude of 29,100 feet (8,870 meters) when, about 55 kilometers west of the town of Wuzhou, it began to descend.
The last point of contact of the flight, according to the aforementioned portal, was about 25 kilometers southwest of Wuzhou, at an altitude of 3,225 feet (989 meters), at 2:22 p.m. local time (06:22 GMT), which would mean that in just three minutes the apparatus descended almost 8,000 meters.
China Eastern and Boeing fall on the stock market
Less than an hour after the event was confirmed, the airline’s website and app China Eastern, the second in the country, cast their screens to black and white as a sign of mourning for the accident.
They also ordered that all 737-800 aircraft remain on the ground after the accident until more information is available about what happened, according to local press.
After the incident, around 5:15 p.m. Beijing time (09:15 GMT), shares of China Eastern in New York lost 16.03% during negotiations prior to the opening of the market, according to the economic news portal Yicai.
That same medium indicates that Boeing shares also suffered strongly around the same time, lowering their value by 8% in London and 6.6% in New York.
In recent months, the American company seemed to be getting closer to obtaining authorization for its 737-MAX – a device different from the accident one – to fly again in China after its prohibition in March 2019 after two accidents, in Ethiopia and Indonesia, which caused the death of almost 350 people. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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