A Boeing Co. 737-800 NG plane operated by China Eastern Airlines Corp. crashed Monday in the southwestern Chinese province of Guangxi.
There were 132 people on board -- 123 passengers and 9 crew -- and the plane went down in a mountainous area near the city of Wuzhou, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China.China Eastern said it will ground all of its Boeing 737-800 jets starting Tuesday. An emergency telephone assistance line for family was set up and the carrier expressed deep condolences to passengers and crew members onboard.
Video posted on social media purported to be from the crash site shows a fire in a heavily wooded areaFlight MU5735’s sudden descent was interrupted briefly when it actually climbed, according to data posted by FlightRadar24.The plane was headed easterly when at 2:20:59pm it began a sudden plunge that would have likely flung objects and any unbelted passengers violently to the ceiling. It went from level flight to a descent rate of almost 31,000 feet per minute in about five seconds.
It’s not clear what would have triggered such an extreme maneuver. The jet turned to the right and left slightly during the descent, but remained on a mostly easterly heading.China has a strong record when it comes to aviation safety, with fatal commercial aircraft crashes unheard of in recent years and airlines operating millions of flying hours without incident.
“And for a plane that is seven years old and has been in commercial service since 2015, it seems less likely, although not impossible, that the cause would be a design or manufacturing issue,” according to the report, which noted that because the plane went down in a wooded area as opposed to over the ocean, it should be easier to recover the cockpit voice recorder.
“I was about two to three kilometers away, I couldn’t hear the sound but the black smoke was there, it looked like an explosion,” Li told local media. He said the whole incident only took a few seconds and by the time he was shooting with his phone, he could only capture smoke. FAA Says Ready to Assist
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