China plane crash: All passengers feared dead after Boeing 737 carrying 132 goes down

A China Eastern Airlines passenger plane carrying 132 people crashed in a mountainous region in south China on Monday, with all the passengers feared dead.

The Boeing 737-800 aircraft was en route from the city of Kunming to Guangzhou when it suddenly started losing altitude and crashed in Teng County in the city of Wuzhou, according to the emergency management department of the Guangxi region.  

China Eastern Airlines later expressed “deep condolences” for “the passengers and crew who died in the plane crash”.

Authorities have yet to confirm how many people have died on flight MU5735 but local media said there was no sign of survivors.

There were no foreigners on the flight, the airline confirmed.

China Eastern said the cause of the crash, in which the aircraft dropped at 31,000 feet a minute, was under investigation.

Xi Jinping, the Chinese President, said he was “shocked” by the crash and called for “all-out efforts” towards the rescue and to find out the “cause of the accident as soon as possible”.

Mr Xi added that authorities must immediately activate the emergency mechanism, make every effort to organise search and rescue, and properly handle the aftermath.

The airline shared details for a hotline for relatives of those on board and said it had activated its emergency mechanism and sent a team on site.

The crash had caused a mountain fire, which was later put out, the regional emergency department said.

State media cited a provincial firefighting department official as saying there was “no sign of life” among the debris.

Videos on social media purportedly of the crash site showed a forest fire and billowing smoke in a lush mountainous area. Other videos showed locals next to airplane parts.  

The plane had 123 passengers and nine crew members on board, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).

The administration said the aeroplane lost contact over the city of Wuzhou. 

“The CAAC has activated the emergency mechanism and sent a working group to the scene,” it said.

The flight departed the city of Kunming at 1.11pm (5.11am GMT), according to FlightRadar24. It was supposed to arrive in the southern metropolis of Guangzhou at 3.05pm (7.05am GMT), but the flight tracking ended at 2.22pm (6.22am GMT).

The aircraft crashed about 2.38pm (6.38am GMT), according to emergency responders.

Boeing said the company was aware of the crash and was “working to gather more information”.

The aircraft was a six-year-old Boeing 737-800 jet – a model with a good safety record and the predecessor to the 737 MAX model, which has been grounded in China for more than three years after fatal crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia.

All China Eastern Boeing 737-800 flights have been grounded, the airline said. China Eastern has 109 of the aircraft in its fleet, according to FlightRadar24.

A video captured by a local mining company’s security camera showed what appeared to be the plane flying essentially straight into the ground, nose first at a high speed.

Messages of condolences poured in from foreign government officials including Boris Johnson, Borut Pahor, the Slovenian President, and the Greek foreign ministry.

State media had initially reported 133 people were on board.

It later emerged that the flight was supposed to have 133 passengers, but one person – a 24-year-old man from Yunnan province – didn’t board the plane because his previous connecting flight was cancelled due to bad weather, according to state-run publication Jimu News.

The safety record of China's airline industry has been among the best in the world over the past decade.

According to Aviation Safety Network, China's last fatal jet accident was in 2010, when 44 of 96 people on board were killed when an Embraer E-190 regional jet flown by Henan Airlines crashed on approach to Yichun airport in low visibility.