© Reuters. People stand in an area where relatives of the passengers of the China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 plane, which crashed in Wuzhou, flying from Kunming to Guangzhou, wait for news, at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport in Guangzhou, Guangdong province
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BEIJING (Reuters) – Rescue workers in China searched heavily forested slopes on Tuesday in hopes they will find survivors of the 132 people aboard a China Eastern Airlines (NYSE:) passenger plane that crashed into the mountains of southern China the day before. Guangxi.
Parts of the Boeing (NYSE:) 737-800 jet were charred over mountainsides after China’s first commercial jet crash since 2010. Burnt remains of ID cards, purses and wallets were also seen, state media reported.
Flight MU5735 was en route from the southwestern city of Kunming, capital of Yunnan Province, to Guangzhou in Guangdong Province, bordering Hong Kong, when it suddenly plunged from cruising altitude and crashed.
Chinese media carried brief highway video footage from a vehicle’s dashcam that apparently shows a jet diving behind trees to the ground at an angle of about 35 degrees from vertical. Reuters could not immediately verify the images.
“The plane fell vertically from the sky,” a local resident quoted the state-run Beijing Youth Daily as saying.
“Although I was far away, I could still see that it was a plane. The plane emitted no smoke during the fall. It fell into the mountains and started a fire.”
China Eastern’s website was turned into black and white after the tragedy as the company expressed its grief. State media have described the situation as “creepy” and that the possibility of everyone on board dying cannot be ruled out.
A working group of the Chinese aviation regulator was deployed to the crash site, along with firefighters and paramilitary forces. Deputy Prime Minister Liu He left for the city of Wuzhou in Guangxi on Monday evening to oversee rescue efforts and the investigation into the crash following an emergency government meeting.
The State Council, or cabinet, said it would appoint officials to address the accident as a priority, identify the cause as soon as possible and strengthen controls for potential safety risks in the civil aviation sector.
State media describes the difficult terrain and said the crash site is enclosed by mountains on three sides, with access via only one small path. Rain is forecast for the area this week.
US-based aviation analyst Robert Mann of RW Mann & Company said researchers need the flight data recorders to understand what could have caused the abrupt drop suggested by Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) data. ADS-B is a technology that allows aircraft to be tracked.
‘GRIM’
The last commercial jet plane crash in mainland China was in 2010, when an Embraer E-190 regional jet flown by Henan Airlines crashed in poor visibility approaching Yichun Airport, killing 44 of 96 people on board. perished on board.
Such accidents usually involve multiple factors, and experts warned it was premature to draw conclusions about the possible causes of the China Eastern crash, especially given the scant information available.
The airline grounded its fleet of 737-800 aircraft on Monday, state media reported. It has 109 of the aircraft, according to FlightRadar24.
The crash comes as Boeing tries to recover from several overlapping crises, including the coronavirus pandemic and crashes with its 737 MAX model.
“Given Boeing’s problems with the 737 MAX, there is a chance that consumers will not want to fly a 737 until it is determined that the cause of the crash in China Eastern is not a design or manufacturing problem,” said Cai von Rumohr, an analyst at investment bank Cowen. Inc, said in a note.
“Therefore, isolating the cause of the crash will be critical. Since the plane crashed in a forested area rather than over the ocean, it should be easier to recover the cockpit voice recorder, which should provide important data on what went wrong,” said Von Rumohr.
Onshore-listed shares of China Eastern fell more than 5% on Tuesday, while those in Hong Kong fell 4% in early morning trading.