A plane carrying 132 people has crashed in southern China, the country's aviation authority has confirmed.
The China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 was traveling from Kunming, Yunnan province in western China, to Guangzhou, Guangdong province, when in crashed in mountains near Wuzhou, Guangxi province.
State broadcaster CCTV, citing the Guangxi Emergency Management Department, said that the 'accident' had resulted in a mountainside fire, with rescue crews currently working to reach the site of the crash. The number of casualties is currently unknown.
In a statement the Civil Aviation Administration of China confirmed that flight number MU5735 had crashed with nine crew members and 123 passengers on board.
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Footage taken from the scene shows smoke rising from the hillside where the plane is feared to have come down, with other videos showing flames spreading through the area.
Flight data recorded by Flightradar24 appeared to show the aircraft suddenly lose altitude at around 2.22pm local time (6.22am GMT), roughly 40 minutes before it was due to land in Guangzhou. The flight had departed from Kunming at around 1.15pm local time and had been in the air for just over an hour at the time of the incident.
Reuters reports that the last available data recorded the flight at an altitude of 3,225 feet with a speed of 376 knots.
The Boeing 737-800 is not the same model as the 737 MAX, which was grounded worldwide between March 2019 and November 2020 when a recurring failure resulted in two fatal accidents in the space of six months.
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The Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, which occurred in November 2018 and March 2019 respectively, killed a total of 346 people and saw Boeing forced to pay $2.5 billion in penalties and compensation.
Airplane crashes in China are incredibly rare, with the country having one of the best aviation safety records in the world. China has not had a fatal passenger plane disaster in over a decade, with the last accident occurring in 2010 when a regional jet flown by Henan Airlines crashed in low visibility on approach to Yichun airport, in northern Heilongjiang province, killing 44 of the 96 people on board.
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Topics: China, no-article-matching
Hannah Smith