BREAKING: China Eastern Boeing 737-800 Plane Reportedly Crashes Into the Mountains; 132 Feared Dead

This is a developing news story!

Reports surfaced that a China Eastern Boeing Flight crashed into the mountains in South China Monday morning.

The Boeing 737-800 reportedly carried 123 passengers and nine crew members, according to Chinese state media.

According to reports from the Global Times, the plane appeared to lose power at cruising altitude, resulting in the aircraft dropping from the sky as the pilot lost control.

A local villager who witnessed the scene of the crash told local news outlet Jimu News that the plane had disintegrated and started a fire that had burned down trees and bamboo before local firefighters arrived and extinguished most of the blaze.

Here’s footage taken by local villagers:

Video footage taken by local villagers shows the aftermath of a plane crash in south China on Monday. The Boeing 737 crashed with 132 people on board.

CGTN has the latest updates: https://t.co/KenJaQ0l9O pic.twitter.com/JMHh7viEeA

— CGTN (@CGTNOfficial) March 21, 2022

Social media reportedly showed the moment the Boeing 737 fell from the sky.

https://twitter.com/motorcycho81/status/1505840539253424128

https://twitter.com/motorcycho81/status/1505847382986031108

https://twitter.com/motorcycho81/status/1505847288995872770

https://twitter.com/motorcycho81/status/1505847331584819200

The plane went down near Wuzhou in Guangxi and nearly 600 firefighters were sent to the crash site to aid local emergency services.

A local news outlet speculated that the flight was MU5735 from Kunming to Guangzhou.

The flight reportedly had not arrived at its destination and was listed in online portals as “out of reach.”

Flight MU5735 left Kunming at 13:11 local time and was scheduled to arrive in Guangzhou at 15:05.

Zero Hedge reported:

Boeing has received a report on Monday’s crash from China Eastern Airlines and will be examining the data to learn more about what went wrong.

Boeing shares are trading lower ahead of the market open in the US; they were off 8% in recent trade.

* * *

In what may be one of the worst airplane crashes of a Chinese passenger plane in decades, a China Eastern Airline plane carrying 132 travelers and crew on board crashed in the mountains of Guangxi Province in southern China on Monday. There was no immediate word on the number of casualties. The plane was a Boeing 737.

Assuming no survivors, the crash would be roughly 30 deaths shy of China’s worst airplane crash in its modern history: the 1994, China Northwest Airlines flight 2303, which broke apart and crashed as a result of an autopilot malfunction, killing all 160 people on board.

Boeing is still reeling from the 737 MAX disaster and this tragedy could spark another tumultuous battle for the company.

https://twitter.com/LindaANjagi/status/1505837675886039043?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1505837675886039043%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Feconomics%2Fchina-eastern-passenger-plane-carrying-132-crashes-mountains

The incident is a reminder of an infamous quote from an internal Boeing email made public during the investigation into the 737 MAX.

Xi Urges China to Find Reason for Boeing Crash Soon: State TV

“This airplane is designed by clowns, who in turn are supervised by monkeys"?

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 21, 2022

BBC added:

The plane dropped thousands of metres in three minutes, flight tracker data showed.

According to FlightRadar24 data, the plane was cruising at 29,100 feet but two minutes and 15 seconds later it was recorded at 9,075 feet. The last sourced information on the flight showed it ended at 14:22 local time, at an altitude of 3,225 ft.

The Boeing 737-800 plane was seven years old, according to tracker websites. It’s the predecessor model to the Boeing 737 Max line, which were the planes involved in deadly crashes in Indonesia in 2018 and Ethiopia in 2019.

China banned that model after those crashes.