Rescue teams battled rain and mud on Tuesday to search for traces of the 132 people aboard the China Eastern Boeing-737 that crashed in a mountainous area in southwest China after a nose-dive. Few minutes.
More than 24 hours after the crash, the cause of which remains unknown, hopes of finding survivors of what could be China’s deadliest air disaster in nearly three decades have all but vanished.
Flight MU5735 had taken off from Kunming (southwest) in the direction of Guangzhou but, in the middle of the flight, it lost more than 26,000 feet of altitude (about 8,000 meters) in just three minutes and crashed in the Guangxi region (southwest).
The airline acknowledged that people on board the flight had died, but has yet to provide more details. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tuesday that the passengers were all Chinese.
In an unusually quick reaction, President Xi Jinping said he was “shocked” and called for a full investigation so that “the causes of the accident can be determined as soon as possible.”
Burnt remains of the plane and traces of the fire it caused were visible on Tuesday, rescuers told AFP. One of them speculated that the passengers had been “totally incinerated” by the intensity of the flames.
A local resident, who gave only his surname Ou, recounted hearing a “roar like thunder” on Monday afternoon, followed by a virulent explosion in the surrounding hills.
Another local evoked a blow “even stronger than an earthquake”.
State media showed uniformed rescue teams climbing over the ground shaken by the plane’s fall, among uprooted trees and barely recognizable debris from the plane, but where part of the wing with the airline’s pink and blue emblem could be distinguished.
Other images showed operators operating drones to facilitate the search in this steep terrain and with dense vegetation.
The disaster occurred after a tailspin, according to videos released by Chinese media whose authenticity could not immediately be verified by AFP.
In Guangzhou, airline employees assisted the families of the 123 passengers and nine crew members on the plane.
“Very unusual” data
CCTV public television broadcast images on Tuesday of rescuers with stretchers or bags on their backs trying to move around the area.
A journalist from the official People’s Daily newspaper who was able to enter the place recorded a video showing shattered metal pieces, pieces of the aircraft or a burned-out camera.
AFP journalists who tried to enter were blocked by a group of agents.
The flight took off from Kunming shortly after 1:00 p.m. (05:00 GMT) and “lost contact while flying over the city of Wuzhou,” according to a statement from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).
State media said Vice Premier Liu He, a senior official close to Xi who often deals with economic issues, was sent to the area to oversee rescue and investigation efforts.
According to specialized flight tracker FlightRadar24, the aircraft lost almost 21,250 feet (6,477 m) in one minute.
Then, after a brief ascent, it plummeted again, at 1,410m, according to the tracker, to 983m above the ground. At 2:22 p.m. on Monday, the flight data was lost.
Jean-Paul Troadec, former director of France’s Air Safety Research and Analysis Office, told AFP it was “too early” to draw any conclusions, but the FlightRadar data is “very unusual.”
In recent years, China has stood out for enviable aviation safety standards, despite the rapid and extensive growth of the sector in recent decades.
State media indicated that the airline will ground all its Boeing 737-800 models. Its shares lost more than 6% at the close on the Shanghai stock exchange.
For its part, the title of the American manufacturer, which said it was willing to collaborate with the Chinese authorities, lost 3.6% on Monday on Wall Street.
The deadliest Chinese commercial flight accident was a China Northwest Airlines crash in 1994 in which all 160 people on board died.
