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| Chinese Boeing plane crashes. Image Credit |
There were no survivors, according to the media, and the airline expressed its sympathy for the passengers and personnel who died.
The plane was traveling from Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, to Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province, which borders Hong Kong.
According to flight-tracking website FlightRadar24, the plane dropped at a final velocity of 31,000 feet per minute. China Eastern said the reason for the incident was under investigation.
The airline said it set up a hotline for relatives of those on board and dispatched a team to the crash site.
According to the media, the plane collapsed and sparked a fire that destroyed bamboo trees. A provincial firefighting department official was quoted in the People's Daily as claiming that there was no trace of life among the rubble.
The airplane, carrying 123 passengers and nine crew members, lost communication over the city of Wuzhou, according to China's Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) and the airline.
According to FlightRadar24 data, the flight left Kunming at 1:11 p.m. (0511 GMT) and was scheduled to arrive in Guangzhou at 3:05 p.m. (0705 GMT).
At 0620 GMT, the plane, which Flightradar24 indicated was six years old, was traveling at an altitude of 29,100 feet. Data revealed it had dropped to 9,075 feet in just over two minutes and 15 seconds.
Its last tracked altitude was 3,225 feet after another 20 seconds.
Even though the cruising phase of flight accounts for the majority of flight time, crashes are uncommon.
Only 13% of deadly commercial accidents happened during the cruise phase between 2011 and 2020, according to data published by Boeing last year, but 28% of fatal accidents occurred on the final approach and 26% on landing.
"During the cruise stage, the plane is usually on autopilot. As a result, it's difficult to comprehend what occurred "a Chinese aviation specialist, Li Xiaojin, said, "Things like this should not have happened from a technical standpoint."
At the time of the crash, online weather data in Wuzhou showed partly cloudy skies with good visibility.
According to state broadcaster CCTV, President Xi Jinping asked for investigators to determine the reason for the disaster as soon as possible and to maintain "absolute" aviation safety.
"We are aware of the early media allegations and are attempting to obtain further information," a Boeing representative said.
Boeing Co. shares were trading at $180.44 in premarket activity, down 6.4 percent.
Following the news of the crash, China Eastern Airlines Hong Kong shares fell 6.5 percent, while its US-listed shares fell 17% in premarket trade.
According to official media, China Eastern grounded its 737-800 jets following the tragedy. According to FlightRadar24, China Eastern has 109 of these planes in its fleet.
China Eastern Airlines, which is owned by the Chinese government, is the world's sixth-largest airline by scheduled weekly seat capacity, according to aviation data source OAG.
The 737-800 has a solid safety record and is the forerunner to the 737 MAX, which has been grounded in China for more than three years following tragic crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia in 2018.
Over the last decade, China's airline industry has had one of the best safety records in the world.
"The CAAC has very strict safety requirements, so we'll just have to wait for additional details to throw light on the likely reason for the accident," said Shukor Yusof, CEO of Malaysian aviation consultant Endau Analytics.
The plane's two "black boxes," the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder, will be recovered by investigators to help throw light on the crash.
The Federal Aviation Administration of the United States indicated it was willing to help China with its probe if asked.
While China's aviation safety record is excellent, it is less transparent than in nations such as the United States and Australia, where regulators publish full records on non-fatal events, according to Greg Waldron, Asia managing editor of industry publication Flightglobal.
"It's difficult to gain a sense of the genuine situation with Chinese carriers because of this," he said. "There have been fears that safety breaches on the mainland are underreported."
According to the Aviation Safety Network, China's most recent fatal jet accident occurred in 2010, when a Henan Airlines Embraer E-190 regional plane crashed on approach to Yichun airport in bad visibility, killing 44 of the 96 passengers on board.
According to the Aviation Safety Network, a China Northwest Airlines Tupolev Tu-154 crashed en way from Xian to Guangzhou in 1994, killing all 160 people on board and ranking as China's worst-ever air accident.
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