Guangzhou (AFP) - A China Eastern passenger jet carrying 132 people crashed into a remote mountainside in southern China on Monday after dropping more than 20,000 feet in just over a minute, sparking a massive fire on impact.
The airline acknowledged that some aboard the Boeing 737-800 travelling from the city of Kunming to the southern hub of Guangzhou had died, but did not offer more specifics.President Xi Jinping quickly called for a full probe.
In Guangzhou, staff assisted loved ones of the 123 passengers and nine crew members aboard the plane, which stopped sending any flight information after dropping a total of 26,000 feet in altitude in just three minutes.
A video carried by some Chinese media appeared to show a plane in a vertical nosedive.AFP could not immediately verify its authenticity.
Flight MU5735, which took off from Kunming shortly after 1:00 pm (0500 GMT), "lost airborne contact over Wuzhou" city in the Guangxi region, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).
"The company expresses its deep condolences for the passengers and crew members who died in the plane crash," China Eastern said in a statement, without providing more information.
The disaster prompted an unusually swift public reaction from Xi, who said he was "shocked" and ordered an immediate investigation into its cause, calling for "absolute safety" in air travel, according to CCTV.
The US National Transportation Safety Board said it had named a senior investigator as a representative to the probe, and that officials from Boeing, General Electric and the Federal Aviation Administration would be technical advisors.
Dropped from sky
Hundreds of firefighters were dispatched to the scene in Teng county near Wuzhou, state media reported, as nearby villagers rushed to help the rescue effort.
"Everyone went to the mountains," Tang Min, who runs a restaurant not far from the crash site, told AFP by telephone.
Flight tracking website FlightRadar24 showed the plane sharply dropped from an altitude of 29,100 feet to 7,850 feet (8,870 to about 2,393 metres) in just over a minute.
After a brief upswing, it plunged to 3,225 feet, the tracker said.There is no data for the flight after 2:22 pm.
One villager told a local news site the plane had "completely fallen apart" and he had seen forest areas destroyed by the fire caused by the crash.
Another villager surnamed Liu told state-run China News Service that he had driven his motorbike to the scene after hearing a loud explosion and seen scattered debris including an aircraft wing and scraps of clothing.
Aerial images of the crash site showed a large crater in the side of a green mountainside.State TV footage followed orange-clad emergency workers battling thick foliage to gather debris.
China Eastern changed its website to black and white on Monday afternoon.
The company said in a January report that it had 289 Boeing 737-series aircraft in its 751-strong fleet.Chinese media reported that the airline will now ground all the 737-800 jets.
Shares in Boeing, which said it was "working to gather more information", closed down 3.6 percent on Wall Street.
'Waiting for news'
At Guangzhou airport, staff in full PPE held up signs to direct distraught relatives to a waiting area marked by high black screens emblazoned with the word "emergency" and guarded by officials and police.
AFP reporters saw loved ones awaiting news and heard sobbing.
One airport staffer told AFP her colleagues were "focusing on taking care" of relatives of those involved in the crash.
A man surnamed Ye told AFP his colleague Tan was onboard.
"When we heard the news...(we) called him over and over for hours, but never got through," Ye said, adding he had alerted the man's parents, who were "going through some very complex emotions".
A woman told local media she had been due to board the flight but had taken an earlier plane at the last minute.Her sister and four friends had taken the crashed jet, she said.
China had enjoyed an enviable air safety record in recent years, as the country was crisscrossed by newly built airports and serviced by new airlines established to match breakneck growth over the last few decades.
A Henan Airlines flight crashed in northeastern Heilongjiang province in 2010, killing at least 42 out of 92 people on board, although the final toll was never confirmed. It was the last Chinese commercial flight crash that caused civilian fatalities.
The deadliest Chinese commercial flight accident was a China Northwest Airlines crash in 1994, which killed all 160 onboard.
Jean-Paul Troadec, former director of France's Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety, told AFP it was "far too early" to draw conclusions, but said the FlightRadar data pattern was "very unusual".
