Story ID: GPchinacrash032120122
China Eastern Grounds 737-800s Following Crash
By: Gregory Polek
Caption: A crash on Monday of a China Eastern Boeing 737-800 in southern China prompted the airline to ground the rest of the type in its fleet.
Word Count: 205
China Eastern Airlines has grounded its fleet of Boeing 737-800s following the crash of one of its narrowbodies on Monday in a mountainous area in China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The airplane took off with 132 people on board from Kunming in Yunnan province on a scheduled flight to Guangzhou, on China’s east coast, according to Chinese state-controlled People’s Daily.

The Civil Aviation Authority of China has sent an investigation team to the location of the crash and firefighters have reached the site to put out a resulting forest fire.  

Surveillance video showed the airplane in a direct nosedive seconds before it crashed. According to data from flight tracking site FlightRadar24, MU5735 began to quickly lose altitude while cruising at 29,100 feet and descended to about 9,000 feet in just over two minutes. FlightRadar24’s last altitude indication shows the airplane at 3,225 feet.

In a comment, Boeing said only that it knew of the initial media reports and that it was “working to gather more information.”

Boeing delivered the airplane, registration B-1791, to China Eastern in June 2015. China Eastern’s fleet of more than 600 airplanes includes 108 Boeing 737-800s and thirty-nine 737-700s.