A China Eastern Boeing 737-800 with 132 people on board crashed in the mountains of southern China on Monday, officials said.
The crash set off a forest fire visible from space in the country's worst air disaster in nearly a decade. The media said there were no signs of survivors.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China said in a statement the crash occurred near the city of Wuzhou in Teng county. The flight was traveling from Kunming in the western province of Yunnan to the industrial center of Guangzhou along the east coast, it added.
Villagers were first to arrive at the forested area where the plane went down, sparking a blaze big enough to be seen on NASA satellite images. Hundreds of rescue workers were swiftly dispatched from Guangxi and the neighboring Guangdong province.
The plane was carrying 123 passengers and nine crew members, China's Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said, correcting earlier reports that 133 people had been on board.
The media cited a rescue official as saying the plane had disintegrated and caused a fire destroying bamboo trees. The People's Daily quoted a provincial firefighting department official as saying there was no sign of life among the debris.
Chinese President Xi Jinping called for an "all-out effort" by the rescue operation, as well as for an investigation into the crash to ensure complete civil aviation safety.
State media reported all 737-800s in China Eastern's fleet were ordered grounded, while broadcaster CCTV said the airliner had set up nine teams to deal with aircraft disposal, accident investigation, family assistance and other pressing matters.
The CAAC and China Eastern both said they had sent officials to the crash site in accordance with emergency measures.
State media said local police first received calls from villagers alerting the crash around 2:30 p.m. (6:30 a.m. GMT). Guangxi provincial emergency management department said contact with the plane was lost at 2:15 p.m. (6:15 a.m. GMT).
Chicago-based Boeing Co. said it was aware of the initial reports of the crash and was "working to gather more information." Boeing stock dropped over 8% in pre-market trading early Monday.
Shares in China Eastern Airlines in Hong Kong closed down 6.5% after news of the crash emerged, while its U.S.-listed shares slumped 17% in premarket trading.
Headquartered in Shanghai, China Eastern is one of the country's top three airlines, operating scores of domestic and international routes serving 248 destinations.
China Eastern's flight No. 5735 had been traveling at around 30,000 feet when suddenly, just after 2:20 p.m., the plane entered a deep dive at its cruising altitude speed of 455 knots (523 mph, 842 kph), according to data from flight-tracking website FlightRadar24.com.
The data suggests the plane crashed within a minute and a half of whatever went wrong.
The plane stopped transmitting data just southwest of Wuzhou, a city of 3 million in eastern Guangxi.
Crashes during the cruise phase of flights are relatively rare even though this phase accounts for the majority of flight time. Boeing said last year only 13% of fatal commercial accidents globally between 2011 and 2020 occurred during the cruise phase, whereas 28% occurred on final approach and 26% on landing.
"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.
Online weather data showed partly cloudy conditions with good visibility in Wuzhou at the time of the crash.
The aircraft was delivered to the airliner from Boeing in June 2015 and had been flying for more than six years. China Eastern Airlines uses the Boeing 737-800 as one of the main workhorses of its fleet – of its over 600 planes, 109 are Boeing 737-800s.
China Eastern online made its website have a black-and-white homepage after the crash.
The accident quickly became a leading topic on China's Twitter-like Weibo platform, with 1.34 billion views and 690,000 discussions. Many posts expressed condolences to the families of victims, while others questioned the planes' safety.
Boeing began delivering the 737-800 to customers in 1997 and delivered the last of the series to China Eastern in 2020. It made over 5,200 of the narrow-body aircraft, a popular, single-aisle commuter plane.
The twin-engine, single-aisle Boeing 737 is one of the world’s most popular planes for short and medium-haul flights. China Eastern operates multiple versions of the common aircraft, including the 737-800 and the 737 Max.
The deadliest crash involving a Boeing 737-800 came in January 2020, when Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard accidentally shot down a Ukraine International Airlines flight, killing all 176 people on board.
The 737 Max version was grounded worldwide after two fatal crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia.
China’s aviation regulator cleared that plane to return to service late last year, making the country the last major market to do so.
The safety record of China's airline industry has been among the best in the world over the past decade.
"The CAAC has very rigid safety regulations and we will just need to wait for more details," said Shukor Yusof, head of Malaysia-based aviation consultancy Endau Analytics.
Investigators will search for the plane's black boxes – the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder – to shed light on the crash.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said it was ready to assist with China's investigation if asked.
According to the 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.
It was the last Chinese commercial passenger flight crash that caused civilian casualties.
The deadliest Chinese commercial flight crash was a China Northwest Airlines crash in 1994 which killed all 160 onboard. Most of the passengers on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared in March 2014 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, were from China.