China flight lost 26,000 feet in under 3 minutes before crash, no sign of survivors: Report
New Delhi/IBNS: The China Eastern Airline Boeing 737-800 aircraft carrying 132 people on board that crashed in the mountains in southern China on Monday reported a sudden loss of cruising altitude-nearly 26,000 feet under 3 minutes, online tracker FlightRadar24 said.
Although there has been no exact figure on the casualty, media reports said there was no sign of survivors.
The airline has deeply mourned the loss of passengers and crew, without specifying how many people had been killed.
The Boeing 737-800 aircraft left China's Kunming at 1:11 pm, FlightRadar24 data showed. The flight was scheduled to land in Guangzhou at 3:05 p.m.
However, the website showed no data for the flight after 2:22 pm.
The plane, which was six years old, had been cruising at an altitude of 29,100 feet at 0620 GMT, Flightradar24 reported.
Just over two minutes and 15 seconds later, data showed it had descended to 9,075 feet.
In another 20 seconds, its last tracked altitude was 3,225 feet.
Final seconds of #MU5735 pic.twitter.com/gCoMX1iMDL
— ChinaAviationReview (@ChinaAvReview) March 21, 2022
The 132 people on board included 123 passengers and nine crew members, the Civil Aviation Administration of China said.
State broadcaster CCTV said the crash "caused a mountain fire" which was later extinguished.
Hundreds of firefighters were sent to the accident site in Teng county near the city of Wuzhou, state media reported. Even nearby villagers too rushed to help.
Crash site pic.twitter.com/8qJWYK8FhS
— ChinaAviationReview (@ChinaAvReview) March 21, 2022
Chinese President Xi Jinping said he was "shocked" over the airline crash and ordered an immediate investigation into its cause.
Support Our Journalism
We cannot do without you.. your contribution supports unbiased journalism
IBNS is not driven by any ism- not wokeism, not racism, not skewed secularism, not hyper right-wing or left liberal ideals, nor by any hardline religious beliefs or hyper nationalism. We want to serve you good old objective news, as they are. We do not judge or preach. We let people decide for themselves. We only try to present factual and well-sourced news.