What happened
On the afternoon of the accident, a scheduled passenger service departed from Kunming-Wujiaba Airport at 13:15 local time, bound for Guangzhou. The aircraft, an Airbus A320, was operating with a total of 132 people on board, consisting of 123 passengers and nine crew members.
While maintaining a cruising altitude of 29,100 feet at approximately 14:20 local time, the flight experienced a period of uncontrolled descent. During this sequence, the plane dropped to 7,400 feet before briefly ascending to 8,600 feet. Shortly thereafter, the aircraft entered a steep, vertical descent. The plane struck heavily wooded, hilly terrain roughly 20 km southwest of Wuzhou. The force of the impact caused the aircraft to disintegrate. There were 132 fatalities and no survivors.
Following the crash, investigators recovered the cockpit voice recorder two days later, and the digital flight data recorder was located on March 27.