Boeing 737 aircraft with 132 passengers crashed yesterday Monday at southern China following fall 8,000 metersan accident that is probably the deadliest in the Asian country since 1994.
There were no reports of casualties until Monday night in Beijing after the disaster, which provoked a heated reaction from President Xi Jinping, something unusual for a Chinese leader.
But looking the data of the accident, it seems unlikely that there are survivors. In an announcement, the China Eastern Airlinesthe company to which the aircraft belonged, “paid tribute” to the “dead” of the disaster.
According to the specialized website FlightRadar24, the aircraft lost in less than a minute somewhere around 21,250 feet (6,477 meters), before disappearing from the radar after 14:22 (local time; at 08:22 Greek time).
Then, after a brief ascent, it began to lose height again, 4,625 feet (1,410 meters), according to the site, to be found at 3,225 feet (983 meters) off the ground. There are no flight data after 14:22.
Jean-Paul Troandek, The former director of France’s aviation security research and analysis service told AFP that it was “too early” to draw any conclusions, but added that FlightRadar data was “very unusual”.
Flight MU5735 of China Eastern Airlines, a Shanghai-based company, had taken off shortly after 13:00 (local time; 07:00 Greek time) from Kunming Metropolis (southwest) and was bound for Canton (south), at a distance about 1,300 kilometers.
The 737-800, with 123 passengers and nine crew members, “lost contact” with air traffic controllers “over Guizhou City” in the Guangxi Mountains, the Chinese Civil Aviation Authority (CAAC) said.
Video broadcast by Chinese media shows an aircraft falling vertically, but the French Agency was not able at this stage to verify its authenticity.
The plane was “pulverized”, said a resident of the area where the accident took place, according to Chinese media.
“Shock”
The accident “caused a fire” in a mountainous area, said the Chinese public television network CCTV, which broadcast footage of firefighters rushing to the scene of the accident in a mountainous, wooded area. The fire was extinguished.
“All the residents mobilized, went to help the rescue teams. “Everyone went to the mountains,” Tang Minh, a trader who lives about four kilometers from the crash site, told AFP by telephone.
President Xi Jinping said it was “shocked” by the accident, according to the official New China News Agency. He called for “the causes of the accident to be determined as soon as possible”.
In the United States, Boeing said it was “trying to gather more information.” The manufacturer’s share lost 3.6% at the close of Wall Street.
According to Yicai, a Chinese media focused on economic news, China Eastern has decided, without waiting for the results of the survey, to ground all 737-800 in its fleet from today. An airline representative was not available for comment.
At the Canton airport, relatives of the passengers, some with tears in their eyes, were gathered in a waiting room provided to them, the French Agency found.
A woman told Chinese media that she was initially going to board the crashed plane, but at the last minute decided to take a flight that had departed earlier. She was waiting for “news” for her sister and four friends.
Yi, who was also waiting in the room, said that a colleague was on the plane. “When we found out (…) we started calling on his cell phone, for hours, but we could never communicate.”
Rare disasters
Aviation accidents are rather rare in China, where the aviation sector has grown dramatically in recent decades and where safety measures are generally strict.
The last major plane crash in the country took place in August 2010. A Henan Airlines plane had crashed in the northeastern part of the country, killing about forty people.
The deadliest plane crash in China’s history was in 1994. A China Northwest Airlines Tupolev 154 crashed shortly after takeoff in Xi’an (north), killing all 160 people on board.
Many Chinese passengers also went missing in March 2014, in the enigmatic disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 bound for Beijing.
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