TWO MINUTES OF TERROR
THIS is the shocking moment a passenger plane with 132 on board nosedives vertically into a mountain at 350mph.
Horrifying footage shows the Boeing 737 jet's final seconds after it plunged 29,100ft in around minute and a half.
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The passenger jet flown by China Eastern Airlines came down in Guangxi, China, on Monday, state media said.
It was heading to Guangzhou from Kunming and was carrying nine crew members and 123 passengers.
Broadcaster CCTV said the six-year-old 737 came down near the city of Wuzhou and sparked a wildfire on the mountain.
Rescuers raced to the scene and found debris strewn over a large area with no evidence of survivors.
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Harrowing images show large pieces of the jet scattered on the ground while a blaze can be seen in the background.
The China Eastern flight departed at 1:11 pm (0511 GMT), FlightRadar24 data showed and had been due to land at 3:05 p.m. (0705 GMT).
Flight-tracking says the descent started between 06:20:43 and 06:20:59 from an altitude of 30,000 feet.
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The plane is understood to have then dropped to just 7400 feet in a matter of minutes before pulling up - climbing 1,200 feet.
It then nosedived and smashed into the ground.
The Aviation Safety Network tweeted: "We are following multiple unconfirmed reports about a possible accident involving China Eastern Airlines flight #MU5735 a Boeing 737-89P (B-1791) en route from Kunming to Guangzhou, China."
China's Civil Aviation Administration of China said in a statement: "The CAAC has activated the emergency mechanism and sent a working group to the scene."
WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY
Experts are baffled by the crash.
Crashes during the cruise phase of flight are relatively rare even though it accounts for the majority of flight time.
"Usually the plane is on auto-pilot during cruise stage. So it is very hard to fathom what happened," said Li Xiaojin, a Chinese aviation expert.
They added: "From a technical point of view, something like this should not have happened."
While aviation expert Arthur Rowe said: “It looks most likely a loss of control event, possibly following a high altitude stall of the aircraft.
“There are multiple possible causes. Jammed or unresponsive control surfaces, especially on the tail are one.
“An inappropriate combination of autopilot settings is another.
“Sabotage - that's probably unlikely on a domestic Chinese flight given the Covid restrictions on entering the country.
“It's unlikely to be engine related as aircraft can fly perfectly well with no engine power - for a limited time.”
Engineering professor Tao Yang of Nottingham University, said: “The plane was completely out of control and at this stage it is very difficult to say what has happened.”
The plane stopped transmitting data just southwest of the Chinese city of Wuzhou.
A villager surnamed Liu told state-run China News Service that he had driven a motorbike to the scene after hearing a loud explosion.
He said he saw debris on the ground, including an aircraft wing and fragments of clothing hanging from trees.
The website of China Eastern Airlines was later presented in black and white, which airlines do in response to a crash as a sign of respect for the assumed victims.
Chinese President Xi Jinping said he was "shocked" by the crash and called for an investigation into the accident, state media reported.
"We are shocked to learn of the China Eastern MU5735 accident," he said according to broadcaster CCTV, while he also called for "all efforts" towards the rescue and to find out the "cause of the accident as soon as possible".
The aircraft was delivered to China Eastern from Boeing in June 2015 and had been flying for over six years.
The 737-800 model that crashed on Monday has a good safety record and is the predecessor to the 737 MAX model that has been grounded in China for more than three years following fatal crashes in 2018 in Indonesia and 2019 in Ethiopia that killed 346 people.
The Boeing 737 Max resumed commercial service back in 2020 after a 20-month safety ban was lifted following the crashes.
The safety record of China's airline industry has been among the best in the world over the past decade.
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According to Aviation Safety Network, China's last fatal jet accident was in 2010, when 44 of 96 people on board were killed when an Embraer E-190 regional jet flown by Henan Airlines crashed on approach to Yichun airport in low visibility.
In 1994, a China Northwest Airlines Tupolev Tu-154 flying from Xian to Guangzhou was destroyed in an accident after take off, killing all 160 people on board and ranking as China's worst-ever air disaster, according to Aviation Safety Network.
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