Rescue teams battled rain and mud on Tuesday as they searched for traces of the 132 people aboard a China Eastern Boeing-737 that crashed in a mountainous area in southeastern China. In addition to traces of the victims, teams are looking for black boxes, devices that store flight data and audio records from the cockpit, to understand the cause of the accident.
Hopes of finding survivors are all but nil a day after the Boeing 737-800 crash in what has to be China’s deadliest air disaster in nearly three decades.
Questions are piling up over the causes of the crash of the aircraft, which lost more than 26,000 feet (nearly 8,000 meters) in two minutes before crashing in a mountainous region on Monday afternoon.
The airline acknowledged that people aboard the flight, which was traveling between the cities of Kunming, in the southwest of the country, and Guangzhou, in the south, died, but did not release details. “The company expresses deep condolences to the passengers and crew members who died in the accident,” China Eastern said in a statement released late Monday.
Chinese regime leader Xi Jinping has ordered a detailed investigation into the causes of the accident. State media said Vice Premier Liu He, who is very close to Xi and is more active on economic issues, was sent to the region to oversee rescue and investigation tasks.
Rescue teams, firefighters and emergency unit agents went to rural Guangxi province, where the accident took place. Employees examined the burnt parts of the plane and traces of the fire. One said the passengers may have been “completely incinerated” by the intensity of the flames.
Parts of the aircraft were scattered on the slopes of the mountains charred by the fire. Burnt remains of identity documents and wallets were also seen, state media said.
The crash site is surrounded by mountains, with only a small access trail, according to official media, and excavators are working to clear a path to the point where the aircraft crashed. The forecast is for rain in the region this week. The police set up a checkpoint in the village of Lu, on the approach to the site, and prevented journalists from entering. Local residents gathered on Tuesday for a small Buddhist ceremony near the crash site.
The disaster came after a high-speed vertical fall, according to a video released by Chinese media. Flight MU5735, which took off from Kunming shortly after 13:00 (2000 GMT), “lost contact while flying over the city of Wuzhou”, according to a statement from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).
According to specialist flight tracker FlightRadar24, the aircraft lost nearly 21,250 feet (6,477 meters) in just one minute before disappearing from radar displays. Then, after a brief climb, it plummeted again, to 1,410 meters, according to FlightRadar24, to be 983 meters above the ground. The aircraft disappeared from radars at 14:22 (3:22 GMT).
Jean-Paul Troadec, former director of France’s Office of Investigation and Analysis of Air Safety, told the AFP news agency that it was “too early” to draw conclusions, but that the FlightRadar data was “very unusual”. experts consulted by sheet also said that the trajectory of the plane draws attention.
Dan Elwell, former head of the Federal Aviation Administration, the US regulatory agency, told Reuters that “accidents that start at cruising altitude are often caused by weather, deliberate sabotage or pilot error,” he said.
In recent years, China has excelled in strict aviation safety standards, despite the rapid and widespread growth of the industry in recent decades.
State media reported that China Eastern had suspended flights with Boeing 737-800 models. In a statement, the American manufacturer said it was trying to “gather more information” about the accident.
The most fatal commercial flight accident in China happened in 1994, when a China Northwest Airlines plane crashed, killing all 160 people on board.
