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A China Eastern Boeing 737-800 with 132 people on board plunged midflight and crashed in a mountainous area of southern China on Monday, according to officials and flight-tracking data. Flight MU5735 left Kunming at 1:11 p.m. local time (1:11 a.m. ET) and was due to arrive at Guangzhou in the southeast of the country in less than two hours, according to information on FlightRadar24. The plane was cruising at 29,100 feet and began a sharp descent after 2:20 p.m., recovering more than 1,000 feet briefly then resuming the dive before it lost contact. It fell more than 25,000 feet in about two minutes. “This kind of tragedy is extremely unusual,” Richard Aboulafia, a managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory, said of the plane’s sudden, sharp drop from its cruising altitude. China’s Civil Aviation Administration said it was sending a team to the crash site in the Guangxi region. Investigators will work to recover so-called black boxes that contain cockpit voice recordings and flight data. They are also likely to examine the aircraft’s previous flights, maintenance history, weather data and pilot health. Chinese state media said the crash had caused a fire in the mountains. If all 123 passengers and nine crew members are confirmed dead, it would be China’s deadliest airline crash since 1994 and the deadliest ever for China Eastern. The 737NG, or Next Generation is the model Boeing released before the Max. It has one of the best safety records of any aircraft with 11 fatal accidents out of more than 7,000 NG planes that have been delivered to customers since 1997, according to aviation data and consulting firm Cirium.<br/>

China Eastern has grounded its fleet of Boeing 737-800s, hours after one example crashed in central China. State broadcaster CCTV first reported news of the operational ban, noting that it was only limited to China Eastern, and not other operators. However, the broadcaster but did not indicate how long the jets — a popular narrowbody among Chinese carriers — will be grounded. The CAAC also did not comment publicly about China Eastern’s decision to halt 737-800 flights. Checks on flight tracking site FlightRadar24 appear to confirm news of the type’s grounding: China Eastern 737-800 flights from 22 March have been listed as cancelled. According to Cirium fleets data, China Eastern operates more than 100 737-800s, which are aged between 2.8 and 13.3 years old. The airline’s fleet makes up about 9% of China’s total number of -800s. Chinese carriers are prolific 737-800 operators, with more than 1,100 in-service jets. Against the global in-service 737-800 fleet, Chinese-operated jets make up more than a quarter of the total numbers. <br/>

Rescue workers assembled for a desperate search Tuesday for any survivors in the crash of a passenger plane carrying 132 people that plunged more than 20,000 feet in just over a minute before crashing in a remote mountain valley in southern China on Monday. China Eastern, which operated the Boeing 737-800, and the central government are investigating the cause of the accident, which is likely to be the country’s biggest aviation disaster in more than a decade. China’s air safety record has been strong in the last two decades but the crash will add another public safety concern for President Xi Jinping. For Boeing, the accident could renew the regulatory scrutiny that followed two crashes in recent years involving another plane, the 737 Max. Flight MU-5735 took off from Kunming, the capital of southwestern Yunnan Province, at 1:11 p.m., according to Flightradar24, a tracking platform. About halfway to its destination, Guangzhou, the commercial hub in southeast China, the plane was cruising at 29,100 feet. Then, about 2:20 p.m., the plane “suddenly started to lose altitude very fast,” Flightradar24 said in a tweet. It quickly descended 20,000 feet — an almost vertical drop — and appeared to briefly regain altitude around 8,000 feet before continuing its plunge, according to Flightradar24’s data. A thunderous boom then rippled across a tree-covered valley, where usually the loudest noises come from swarms of insects and villagers’ motorbikes. At first, residents in Teng County in the Guangxi region were baffled by the explosion. Rescue workers by the hundreds flooded the site but, according to initial reports, encountered only debris — including parts of a plane wing and pieces of charred cloth — in the heavily wooded, remote area. Pictures and video showed a frenzy of nighttime activity as rescuers assembled tents and command posts, setting up power supplies and lights, and lining up dozens of ambulances in the hope of finding anyone alive. Dozens of local volunteers on motorbikes carried in water, food and tents.<br/>

The China Eastern jet was flying a normal route to Guangzhou when it suddenly nosed over at cruise altitude and dove. That’s about all that is known for certain about the unusual crash that feared killed all 132 people aboard the aircraft Monday in China’s worst commercial aviation accident in more than a decade. While there have been a handful of crashes in which an airliner plunged from cruising altitude, few, if any, fit the extreme profile of the Boeing 737-800 as it pointed steeply toward the ground, according to veteran crash investigators and previous accident reports. “It’s an odd profile,” said John Cox, an aviation safety consultant and former 737 pilot. “It’s hard to get the airplane to do this.” As investigators search for the plane’s two crash-proof recorders and begin poring over clues, they will be trying to determine why the jet made such an abrupt and severe dive, which sets it apart from earlier accidents. They will be looking at the weather the plane encountered, whether the pilots made any distress calls, any hints in the wreckage of possible malfunctions and detailed profiles of the crew. Flight MU5735 was at about 29,000 feet (8,839.2m) altitude roughly 100 miles (160.93k) from its destination -- about the point at which the pilots would begin descending to land -- when it started plunging at a far greater rate than normal. Instead of gradually dropping by a few thousand feet per minute -- which produces a barely detectable sensation for passengers -- it began falling at more than 30,000 feet per minute within seconds, according to tracking data logged by Flightradar24. Overall, it plunged almost 26,000 feet in the span of roughly 1 minute, 35 seconds, the data track showed. The plane’s dive appeared to have halted for about 10 seconds and it climbed briefly, adding an unusual twist to the scenario. But the Flightradar24 track, which is based on radio transmissions from the plane, then showed it resuming a steep plunge. <br/>

Boeing CE Dave Calhoun told employees on Monday that the planemaker has offered the full support of its technical experts in the investigation of the crash of a China Eastern Airlines 737-800 airplane. Calhoun said in an email to employees he was limited by what Boeing could say about the investigation being led by the Civil Aviation Administration of China. "Trust that we will be doing everything we can to support our customer and the accident investigation during this difficult time, guided by our commitment to safety, transparency, and integrity at every step," Calhoun said.<br/>

The NTSB said on Monday it had appointed a senior air safety investigator as a US accredited representative to the investigation of the crash of a China Eastern Boeing 737-800 near Wuzhou, China. Representatives from Boeing, CFM, a joint venture of General Electric and Safran that produced the engines, and the FAA will serve as technical advisers, the NTSB added. Under an international agreement, the US can serve as a representative to the crash probe since the plane was manufactured in the US. It is not clear if or when the NTSB will travel to the crash site in China. After a 2018 Boeing 737 MAX crash in Indonesia, the NTSB immediately dispatched investigators to Indonesia to participate in the Indonesian government’s investigation. Then NTSB Chair Robert Sumwalt said in 2019 testimony before Congress that during the search for the “black boxes” – flight data recorder (FDR) and cockpit voice recorder (CVR) – “an NTSB investigator was stationed onboard one of the search vessels.”<br/>

Travellers planning to hopscotch their way across Europe using the continent's cheap airfares may be in for a shock, with France becoming the first country to slash domestic flights in order to meet the European Union's ambitious carbon reduction targets. From April this year, the French government is banning short flights where train journeys of 2.5 hours or less exist, which includes routes from Paris to popular destinations such as Bordeaux and Lyon. "The government has been encouraging passengers to catch trains, and now they are taking it to the next step," says Air France's George Siljanoski. The French ban makes an exception for flights that connect to international flights, so a routing such as Lyon-Paris-Singapore-Sydney is still possible. However, the reduced number of domestic flights means that travellers will have to plan ahead. Other countries considering similar bans include Spain and some Scandinavian countries. Germany has already doubled the taxes on short-haul flights and is also exploring the idea while in Austria, the national carrier has dropped its popular Vienna to Salzburg route. Passengers arriving in Vienna now have to transfer to a train service for the final leg to Salzburg. Environmental groups are demanding more action, with Greenpeace EU agitating for a ban on flights where an alternative rail trip of less than six hours exists. However, longer routes generate an outsize share of emissions. According to European air traffic management organisation Eurocontrol, long-haul flights generate half of all carbon emissions within Europe although they make up just six per cent of flights.<br/>

A Jakarta court has again extended flag carrier Garuda Indonesia’s debt restructuring process by two months, a case official said on Monday, because the company has yet to finish verifying over $10b in claims. This is the second extension granted to the state-controlled airline, which on Jan. 21 was allowed two extra months to complete the claims verification as part of the debt restructuring process. The company now has until May 20 to complete the overall debt restructuring process, said Martin Patrick Nagel, a court-appointed curator for the case. As of March 14, claims worth $9.72b by 229 creditors were yet to be verified and claims worth $885.5m were disputed due to differences between the airline and claimants’ books. Garuda is seeking to slash liabilities of $9.8b to $3.7b under a court-supervised debt restructuring. Creditors have submitted $13.8b worth of claims against the struggling airline.<br/>