World
Plane carrying 132 crashes in South China
Boeing 737 passenger plane crashed in Southwest China
Beijing: A passenger plane— Boeing 737— with 133 people on board crashed in Southwest China on Monday, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
So far, it is feared there are no survivors, but the number of casualties by the catastrophe - and reason for the crash are not yet known.
According to reports, the plane was a 6-year-old 737-800 aircraft with 123 passengers and nine crew on board, lost contact over the city of Wuzhou.
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.
Boeing China's website also switched to black and white.
A video shared online showed white smoke billowing from mountains.
Preliminary data suggested it was Flight MU5735 en route from Kunming to Guangzhou.
Local media citing airport staff reported, flight MU5735 had not arrived at its scheduled destination in Guangzhou after it took off from the city of Kunming shortly after 1pm.
The flight-tracking ended at 2:22pm at an altitude of 3,225 feet (983 metres) and a speed of 376 knots (696km/hour).
It had been due to land at 3:05pm (07:05 GMT).
The twin-engine, single-aisle Boeing 737 is one of the world’s most popular planes for short and medium-haul flights.
The crash could become China’s one of worst air disasters in many years as the country has established a relatively safe flying record over the past few decades.
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.
In 1994, a China Northwest Airlines Tupolev Tu-154 flying from Xian to Guangzhou was destroyed in an accident after takeoff, killing all 160 people on board.