“Although I was far away, I could still see that it was a plane. The plane did not emit smoke during the fall. It fell into the mountains and started a fire.”
Vice Premier Liu He left for Wuzhou city in Guangxi on Monday night to oversee the rescue efforts and crash investigation after an emergency government meeting. Authorities barred journalists and onlookers from approaching the site. An official at a checkpoint at Lu village inn Teng county toldUS-based aviation analyst Robert Mann of RW Mann & Company said investigators will need the flight data recorders to understand what might have caused the abrupt descent suggested by Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast data. ADS-B is a technology that allows aircraft to be tracked.
China Eastern and two of its subsidiaries on Monday grounded its fleet of 737-800 planes, state media reported. The group has225 of the aircraft, data from British aviation consultancy IBA shows.