No survivors found after Chinese airliner crash: state media

No survivors have yet been found in Monday’s horrific crash of the China Eastern plane, which plunged into a forested mountainous area with 132 people on board, state media confirmed on Tuesday.

“Wreckage of the plane was found at the scene, but so far no one has been found on board the plane with which contact was lost,” state broadcaster CCTV said more than 18 hours after the wreck in southern China.

The cause of the crash, which Chinese officials say is the country’s worst plane disaster in a decade, was not immediately clear.

State media had quoted a rescue official as saying the plane completely disintegrated on impact.

China Eastern Flight 5735 was flying at around 2:20 p.m. at an altitude of about 29,000 feet at 523 miles per hour when the plane suddenly fell out of the sky and burst into flames.

Horrifying footage captured the doomed plane’s freefall to the ground before it crashed into a mountain near the city of Wuzhou in southern Guangxi province.

The fiery crash was large enough to be seen on NASA satellite imagery.

The plane crashed at 7,400 feet before briefly returning to about 1,200 feet and then descending again. The plane stopped transmitting data 96 seconds into the crash.

The flight took off from the city of Kunming just after 1 p.m. and was en route to Guangzhou. The weather in Wuzhou at the time of the crash was partly cloudy with good visibility.

Boeing said it was working to gather more information about the crash. China Eastern, the country’s second-largest airline, said it was also investigating.

With mail wires