An aircraft of the China Eastern Airlines, with 132 people on board crashed on Monday in the densely forested mountains of China’s southern Guangxi province. While the rescuers are keeping up with their search in the forest areas in the remote mountains, on Tuesday, the hopes to find survivors of the diminished as night fell.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China said in a statement on Monday that the Boeing 737 jet belonging to China Eastern Airlines, which flew from Kunming to Guangzhou, crashed in Tengxian County near the city of Wuzhou.
Parts of the Boeing 737-800 jet were found spread across the mountain slopes scorched by fire. The crash happens to be China’s first crash involving a commercial jetliner since the year 2010. The Chinese state media has described the situation as “grim”.
Flight MU5735 was en route to Guangzhou in Guangdong province bordering Hong Kong from the southwestern city of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, when it suddenly plunged from cruising altitude and crashed.
A video footage from a vehicle’s dashboard camera has gone viral showing the jet nose-diving in the mountains behind trees.
The state media said that the crash site is enclosed in by mountains on three sides, with access available through a single tiny path. A group from the Chinese aviation regulator has been deployed to the crash site, alongside fire rescue and paramilitary forces.
Meanwhile, the US-based aviation analyst Robert Mann of R.W. Mann & Company said that the investigators need the flight data recorders to understand what might have caused the abrupt descending of the jet, as has been suggested by the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) data. The ADS-B technology used in modern aircrafts allows them to be tracked.
Cowen analyst Cai von Rumohr said that because of Boeing’s technical issues with the 737 MAX, there are potential chances that the passengers may prefer not flying on a 737 jet until the cause of the Chinese crash is determined not to be a design or manufacturing issue.
So, finding the root cause of the crash will be crucial. As the plane came down on land opposed to over the ocean, recovering the cockpit voice recorder should be easier, which would provide important data on what went wrong, he added.
“Deeply shocked and saddened to learn about the crash of the passenger flight MU5735 with 132 on board in China’s Guangxi. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of the crash and their family members,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a tweet while expressing sadness on the crash.
