Suddenly, the plane dived rapidly and steeply from an altitude of 9,000 meters. All 132 people on board are likely to have died in Monday's crash in southern China. There is no explanation for the accident yet, but all similar planes operated by China Eastern have been grounded.
Although there has been no evidence that it was the aircraft model's fault, China Eastern is letting everyone know. Boeing 737-800 remain on the ground, China's Ministry of Transport announced. This concerns over 100 aircraft.
The incident thus becomes a new question mark for the aviation giant Boeing, which had major problems with the 737 Max last year. Despite the name, those planes are not the same type as the one that has now suffered an accident, but began production when the 737-800 was discontinued. The Max plane was temporarily grounded worldwide after two major accidents.
In Monday's accident - the worst in China in more than a decade - the plane crashed into a forest on a mountainside outside the city of Wuzhou, in the Guangxi region. The crash caused a fire that could be seen by satellites and also created a large hole in the mountainside, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.
The crash was so violent that the entire plane was broken into small pieces, as can be seen in photos from the scene.
The plane belonged to the large airline China Eastern and had taken off from Kunming in Yunnan with the destination Canton (Guangzhou). After about an hour of flight and at an altitude of almost 9,000 meters, it suddenly began to dive sharply, according to information on the traffic website Flightradar 24. When the plane was down to an altitude of about 2,000 meters, it rose for a short moment, but then it dived again and crashed.
The entire sequence of events, from the first sudden dive, took only 96 seconds.
Both people and drones are reportedly currently searching the accident area for the aircraft's "black boxes" so that they can provide a clearer picture of what went wrong.
US-based Boeing states that its own experts are prepared to assist the official investigation.
123 of the people on board were passengers and nine were crew members. Relatives gathered at the airport in Guangzhou on Monday, where authorities also said they had reserved places in five different hotels to take care of them.
The vast industrial and commercial city of Guangzhou lies north of Hong Kong along China's southern coast. It is home to more than 18 million people. Kunming, with 8.5 million inhabitants, is the regional capital of Yunnan in the southwest and an important hub for China's trade with its neighbors in Southeast Asia.
Source: TT
