China Eastern plane carrying 132 crashes with an unknown number of casualties
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A China Eastern Airlines passenger plane carrying 132 people has crashed in southern China, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
There was no information about any casualties in the incident, which occurred on Monday.
The Boeing 737 plane crashed in the countryside near Wuzhou city in the Guangxi region. It “caused a mountain of fire”, CCTV said, adding that rescue teams were dispatched to the scene.
There was no word on the cause of the crash of the plane which flight-tracking website Flightradar24 identified as a six-year-old 737-800 aircraft.
Local media reported that flight MU5735 had not arrived at its scheduled destination in Guangzhou after it took off from the city of Kunming shortly after 1pm (05:00 GMT), citing airport staff.
The flight-tracking ended at 2:22pm (06:22 GMT) at an altitude of 3,225 feet (983 metres) and a speed of 376 knots (696km/hour).
It had been due to land at 3:05pm (07:05 GMT).
Naijaparrots gathered that it was the biggest aviation incident China has had in years.
“It seems like there is a wildfire caused by the plane coming down [in Quangxi], and you can get a sense of how remote this area is,” eyewitness said.
“Because of how difficult this terrain is you can see that it is not going to be easy to get rescue teams there very quickly.”
China Eastern is one of China’s three major air carriers, operating scores of domestic and international routes serving 248 destinations.
The safety record of the country’s airline industry has been among the best in the world over the past decade.
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