A shocking video from the moment the Chinese Boeing 737 plane crashed and crashed in Guangxi Province in China, has been circulating on social media for the last few minutes.
A Chinese Eastern Airlines Boeing 737 carrying 132 people has crashed in southwest China. The plane crash is likely to be the deadliest since 1994 in China, where aviation safety has improved significantly.
The plane lost contact as it flew over the city of Guizhou in the Guangxi Mountains, the Chinese Civil Aviation Authority (CAAC) said, without giving a report on the casualties.
“It was confirmed that the flight crashed,” the agency said in a statement, adding that a “working group” had rushed to the scene. The aircraft carried 123 passengers and a nine-member crew.
Chinese President Xi Jinping said he was “shocked” by the accident, state-run Chinese state television CCTV reported. And in an unusual heated reaction, the strongman from Beijing demanded that the causes of the crash be identified as soon as possible.
BREAKING: 133 doden be neergestort vliegtuig in zuid-China. Zou gaan om een Boeing 737 van de maatschappij China Eastern pic.twitter.com/joderlSEXR
– Roland Smid (@SmidRoland) March 21, 2022
Videos are circulating on social media that allegedly show the crash from afar, the fire after and the first debris.
According to local media, China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735 took off at 13.00 local time from Kunming to Canton, at a distance of 1,300 kilometers.
The plane was torn to pieces after crashing into a hillside, a local resident said.
According to the FlightRadar24 website, the aircraft lost 26,000 feet (7,925 m) in 3 minutes before disappearing from radar at 14.22 local time.
A blow to Boeing
Air crashes are relatively rare in China, where air transport have developed significantly in recent decades and where security measures are strict.
The last major plane crash occurred in August 2010, when a Henan Airlines flight crashed in northeast China, killing 40 people.
The worst case scenario is the 1994 crash of a China Northwest Airlines Tupolev 154 shortly after take-off from Xi’an in northern China, which killed 160 people.
Many Chinese passengers also went missing in March 2014 during the enigmatic disappearance of the flight MH370 by Malaysian Airlines to Beijing.
Today’s disaster is new hard blow for Boeing in China.
In March 2019, China was the first country in the world to order its airlines to suspend 737 MAX flights for safety reasons.
The measure was taken after two accidents with 737 MAX abroad, with 346 dead.
Three years later, the Chinese regulator finally lifted the Boeing 737 MAX flight ban last December. It is not known if these aircraft have resumed commercial flights to China.
The decision to lift the ban was very important for tBoeing, as China is an important market for the company.
The Chinese regulator had set a condition for the return of the 737 MAX to the Chinese skies to make technical modifications to guarantee flight safety.
China was the last major country to lift the 737 MAX flight ban.
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