A China Eastern passenger jet carrying 133 people crashed in southwest China, causing a mountain fire, with no casualties.
The Boeing 737 airliner crashed in the remote countryside near Wuzhou city, Guangxi region, and “triggered a mountain fire,” according to CCTV, quoting the provincial emergency management office.
Rescue personnel were also summoned to the location, according to the report.
At present, it has been confirmed that this flight has crashed, the CAAC said, adding that it had activated its emergency response and “dispatched a working group to the scene”.
Flight tracker FlightRadar24 revealed no additional data for flight MU5735 after it arrived in Wuzhou at 2:22 p.m. local time. It indicated that the plane had plummeted from an altitude of 29,100 feet to 3,225 feet in three minutes before flight data was lost.
In recent years, China has had an exceptional record of aviation safety in a country crisscrossed by newly built airports and serviced by new airlines founded to match the country’s fast expansion over the previous several decades.
In 2010, a Henan Airlines flight crashed in Heilongjiang province’s northern region, killing at least 42 of the 92 persons on board, however the full toll was never verified.