A passenger plane with over 130 people on board crashed on Monday afternoon in a mountainous area of southern China, the Civil Aviation Administration of China confirmed, prompting rescue teams to rush to the steep, heavily wooded site in hope of finding survivors.
The Boeing 737 plane, operated by China Eastern Airlines, went down in the Guangxi region, and flames and smoke could be seen rising from a hillside, initial Chinese news reports said, according to pictures and videos shared from the scene. The fire was put out later Monday.
“The situation with casualties remains unclear,” said an online report issued by Chinese state television.
Residents in the area told reporters that the plane appeared to have shattered into debris, dampening hopes of finding survivors. The company offered its condolences to the relatives of those on board in a news statement.
Initial reports said the plane, Flight 5735, crashed in Teng County in Guangxi while flying from Kunming, a city in southwest China, to Guangzhou, a city in the country’s far south. The plane was carrying 132 people, including 123 passengers and 9 crew members, according to the civil aviation administration. State media reports initially said 133 passengers were on board.
China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, quickly issued a statement calling for rescuers to do their utmost and “handle the aftermath in a proper manner.” The Chinese central government dispatched officials to the scene to deal with the disaster and investigation into its causes.
“Ensure the absolute safety of civil aviation operations,” Mr. Xi said in his instructions.
Officials in China have dispatched nearly 1,000 firefighters and 100 members of a local militia on a rescue mission to the site. According to Guangxi’s fire department, 117 emergency workers with about two dozen fire trucks have arrived on the scene.
The plane, about seven years old, had been flying steadily on this flight until it abruptly lost altitude at around 2:20 p.m., flight data indicated.
The plane was not a Boeing 737 Max, a model that has not resumed flying in China after a ban prompted by deadly crashes in Indonesia in 2018 and Ethiopia in 2019.
Chinese state media said the airline has confirmed that there were no foreign passengers aboard the plane.
Family members of the flight’s crew have begun to gather at a China Eastern Airlines office in Yunnan Province, according to Chinese state media. The southwestern city of Kunming, where the plane took off, is the capital of Yunnan. A team is being set up at that office to assist the families.
The crash could become one of China’s worst air disasters in many years, after a succession of deadly accidents in the 1990s. Over the past two decades, the country has established a relatively safe flying record, thanks to a young fleet of planes and stricter air controls.
Firefighters in Teng County were first alerted to a possible flight accident there in the afternoon, when villagers reported that they had come across debris from a plane, the China News Service reported.
By Monday night, more than 100 firefighters had arrived at the scene, with nearly 1,000 more on their way, according to Chinese officials. But the nighttime rescue efforts are expected to be hampered by the rains and heavy winds in the forecast.
John Liu, Liu Yi, Claire Fu , Amy Chang Chien and Nadav Gavrielov contributed reporting.
March 21, 2022
An earlier version of this article misstated the status of the orders of Boeing Max planes among Chinese airlines. Boeing has been looking to deliver Max planes ordered before the ban was imposed; the airlines have not announced new orders.
