China Airlines confirms Boeing 737 crashes in Guangxi region with 132 onboard
GUANGZHOU, China, March 21 (Reuters) A China Eastern Airlines (600115. SS) Boeing 737-800 with 132 people on board crashed in the mountains in southern China on Monday after a sudden plunge from cruising altitude at about the time when it would generally start to descend ahead of its landing.
The media said there were no signs of survivors on the domestic flight.
The airline said it deeply mourned the passengers and crew, without specifying how many people had been killed on the jet, an earlier model to the 737 MAX with a strong safety record.
Boeing (BA.N) said it was ready to assist China Eastern and contacted U.S. transportation safety regulators over the incident.
Chinese media carried brief highway video footage from a vehicle's dashcam, apparently showing a jet diving to the ground behind trees at about 35 degrees off vertical. Reuters could not immediately verify the footage.
Flight MU5735 was en route from the southwestern city of Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, to Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong, bordering Hong Kong, when it crashed.
China Eastern said the cause of the crash was under investigation. Such accidents typically involve multiple factors and experts warned it was far too early to draw any conclusions on the potential causes, especially in light of the scarce information available.
Investigators will be scouring the wreckage and flight recorders for factors that could have caused the plane to plummet vertically and slam into the mountains at high speed.
The airline said it had sent a working group to the site. There were no foreigners on the flight, Chinese state television reported, citing China Eastern.
Relatives, friends and colleagues of passengers gathered late on Monday in a cordoned off area at the jet's destination, Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport.
One man surnamed Yan said that a colleague had been on the plane, and that he had notified the 29-year-old's mother.
The 737-800 has a good safety record and is the predecessor to the 737 MAX model that has been grounded in China for more than three years after fatal crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia.
The crash has again thrust the U.S. manufacturer's most sold aircraft family into the spotlight and comes as it works to emerge from the 737 MAX safety crisis and global pandemic, which decimated air travel demand and strained its finances.
Investigators will search for the plane's black boxes the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder to shed light on the crash.
The U.S. NTSB said it had appointed a senior air safety investigator as an accredited U.S. representative to China's probe.
Air crash investigations are typically led by the country of the accident and include participation by the plane's country of origin, so U.S. investigators would be expected to join the probe of the U.S.-made Boeing jet.
China's airline safety record has been among the best in the world for a decade, although it is less transparent than in countries like the U.S. and Australia where regulators release detailed reports on non-fatal incidents, according to Greg Waldron, Asia managing editor at industry publication Flightglobal.
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