Plane crash in China: The flight from Kunming to Guangzhou departed at 1.11 pm local time.
New Delhi:
China Plane Crash: A China Eastern passenger jet has crashed in southwest China and caused a mountain fire with an unknown number of casualties, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said.
Here's your 10-point cheatsheet to this big story:
- The jet was a 6-year-old Boeing 737-800NG aircraft and was carrying 132 people. It had 123 passengers and nine crew on board. The People's Daily quoted a provincial firefighting department official as saying there was no sign of life among the scattered debris.
- Following the crash, China Eastern Airlines has grounded all of its Boeing 737-800 flights.
- Xi Jinping "shocked" over China jet crash, has ordered a probe, news agency AFP reported, quoting state media. There was no immediate word on the cause of the crash.
- The plane crashed in the rural countryside near Wuzhou city, Guangxi region and "caused a mountain fire", Chinese state media CCTV said. One villager told a local news site that the plane involved in the crash had "completely fallen apart" and he had seen nearby forest areas destroyed by a fire caused when the plane crashed onto the mountainside.
- The aircraft involved wasn't a new-generation Boeing Max jet, the model involved in previous fatal crashes. The re-engined Max narrow-body was grounded in March 2019 in the wake of fatal crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia. That particular make of plane still hasn't returned to commercial service in China.
- The China Eastern flight MU5735 from Kunming to Guangzhou departed at 1.11 pm local time (0511 GMT), FlightRadar24 data showed.
- The flight-tracking ended at 2.22 pm local time (0622 GMT) at an altitude of 3225 feet with a speed of 376 knots. It had been due to land in Guangzhou, on the east coast, at 3:05 p.m. (0705 GMT).
- The website of China Eastern Airlines was later presented in black and white, which airlines do in response to a crash as a sign of respect for the assumed victims.
- Shares of Boeing fell 6.8% to $179.97 in pre-market U.S. trading. Stock in Shanghai-based China Eastern fell as much as 6.4% in late trading in Hong Kong.
- 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.
