A mother, a fiancé, a friend. China mourns air crash victims

Awaiting their arrival, those loved ones were instead met with horror after China Eastern Airlines flight 5735, en route from Kunming to Guangzhou, crashed on Monday in the densely forested mountains of southern China.Rescue teams searched the crash site for a third day Wednesday, but no survivors have been found. Meanwhile, stories of the victims are emerging on state media that paint a portrait of the 132 people on board, as people across the country share messages of grief — their pain made sharper by two years of isolation and separation during the Images and footage of the crash deepened the nationwide horror — especially a video taken by a mining company near the crash site, showing what appears to be a plane hurtling rapidly toward the forest, nearly vertical in its nosedive.CNN cannot independently confirm the authenticity of the video, or that the purported aircraft is MU5735 — but the steep decline matches the flight tracking data available, which showed the China Eastern jet plunged more than 25,000 feet (7,600 meters) in under two minutes.Many Weibo users also pointed out that the heartbreak of the tragedy is exacerbated by difficulties of life during Covid, with many families scattered and unable to see each other. With China currently fighting its biggest Covid wave since Wuhan 2020, the crash felt like a sucker punch.”They should have been able to go home for a reunion, and travel with their families after the pandemic,” one person wrote in a Weibo post. “(The Guangzhou airport) still has all the people they love most.””In the past two years, we’ve missed too many beautiful things because of Covid-19 or other reasons,” another wrote. “For those passengers on the plane, maybe they all had messages on their phones — ”See you later,’ ‘You’re almost home,’ ‘Finally we don’t need to do long-distance relationship anymore.’ But their lives ended at that moment, while receiving those messages.”