China Eastern jet with 132 onboard crashes in Guangxi

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Monday, March 21, 2022

B-1791, the aircraft involved in the crash, photographed at Hong Kong International Airport in 2015.
Image: Kelvin Yu.

Today, China Eastern Airlines Flight 5735 crashed in the mountains of Guangxi near Wuzhou. The Civil Aviation Administration of China confirmed the crash and reported that there were 123 passengers and 9 crew members on board. It has also sent out personnel to the crash site. No signs of survivors have been reported. The cause of the deadly crash is still unknown.

Amateur video footage, rebroadcast by state media, showed the aircraft in a nosedive descent at high speed before crashing.

Local media reported that the impact of the aircraft had caused a forest fire in the region which has now been put out. The flight took off from Kunming at 13:11 CST (05:11 UTC) and was headed to Guangzhou. Due to the strong impact on the ground, it is suspected that no one survived the crash.

The aircraft was a 6-year-old Boeing 737-800 with registration B-1791. According to the last relayed data from the ground-based ADS-B stations of Flightradar24, the aircraft took a dip from an altitude of 29,100 feet (8,870 m) to 3,225 feet (983 m) in just three minutes.

China Eastern Airlines has not yet commented on the crash. According to local media reports, the airline has greyed its website as a sign of mourning.

China has a good aviation safety record with its strict aviation norms and regulations. China had its last fatal crash in 2010 when an Embraer E190 of Henan Airlines crashed due to low visibility on approach.


Sources