Boeing 737 with 132 people on board crashes in southern China
TASS has put together the main facts about the crash
China Eastern, Credit- John McArthur
A Boeing 737 passenger plane with 132 people on board crashed in a mountainous area in southern China.
The cause of the crash still remains unknown, while rescue workers are working at the site. A special commission has been formed to investigate the accident.
TASS has put together the main facts about the crash.
What happened
- A Boeing 737-800 passenger plane operated by China Eastern Airlines was headed from Kunming (in China’s southwestern Yunnan province) to Guangzhou (in the southern Guangdong province).
- According to the flight-tracking website FlightRadar24, the flight departed Kunming at 1:15 pm local time. The plane suddenly began to lose speed and altitude at about 2:20 pm and then vanished from radars.
- The flight crashed in a mountainous area in the Teng county of the Wuzhou district in the Guangxi Autonomous Region.
- The crash ignited a forest fire that was later extinguished.
- There were 132 people on board, including 123 passengers and nine crew members. There is no information about foreign nationals on board.
- The plane, less than seven years old, has been in operation since 2015.
Authorities’ response
- The first group of 117 rescue workers has already arrived at the crash site. Firefighters had to walk there because of the difficult terrain.
- Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered the Emergencies Ministry "to activate the emergency response mechanism, launch a search and rescue operation and resolve the situation."
- According to a decision by China’s State Council, a special commission will investigate the accident. It has also been ordered to ensure civil aviation safety.
- China Eastern Airlines grounded several flights from Kunming following the crash.
Similar accidents
- The last major crash involving a Boeing 737-800 aircraft took place on February 5, 2020, when three people were killed and another 179 suffered injuries during the landing of a flight operated by Turkey’s Pegasus Airlines in Istanbul.
- The biggest Boeing accident of the past years occurred on January 8, 2020, when a Ukrainian flight was mistakenly downed by the Iranian military outside Tehran. The crash killed 176 people.