The China Eastern plane descended more than 20,000 feet in just over a minute.

China Jap Airways’ Flight MU-5735 left Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, at 1:11 p.m. on Monday for what ought to have been an hour-and-a-half flight east to Guangzhou, a serious business metropolis in southeastern China.

After an hour, although, the flight turned horribly fallacious, in keeping with knowledge from Flightradar24, a monitoring platform.

About 2:20 p.m., it “all of the sudden began to lose altitude very quick,” Flightradar24 said in a tweet.

The airplane was cruising at an altitude of 29,100 toes when, in simply over a minute, it misplaced greater than 21,000 toes. It appeared to briefly regain altitude round 8,000 toes earlier than persevering with its plunge, in keeping with Flightradar24’s knowledge.

A supervisor for Wuzhou Metropolis Beichen Mining, Liao Wenhui, confirmed by phone that their surveillance digital camera caught a picture that seemed to be a airplane plunging instantly towards earth, however refused to say extra.

The airplane was within the far east of the Guangxi area, the place climate studies don’t recommend any potential contributing elements. Temperatures reached a excessive of 86 levels Fahrenheit round 2 p.m., in keeping with the China Meteorological Administration. Winds have been reasonable at lower than 12 miles per hour, and visibility was 10 miles. Rain was forecast for the night, however no precipitation had been measured on the time of the crash.

Amy Chang Chien contributed to this text.