Plane carrying 132 passengers crashes in China, Xi orders probe

A China Eastern passenger jet carrying 132 people crashed onto a mountainside in southern China on Monday causing a large fire, shortly after losing contact with air traffic control and dropping thousands of metres in just three minutes.

There was no immediate confirmation of the number of casualties, but the disaster prompted an unusually swift public reaction from President Xi Jinping who said he was “shocked” and ordered an immediate investigation into its cause.

The Boeing 737 flight from Kunming city to the southern hub of Guangzhou “lost airborne contact over Wuzhou” city in the Guangxi region on Monday afternoon, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).