Boeing shares fell as much as 8 percent in premarket trading on Monday after a 737 passenger airplane crashed in southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Monday afternoon with 132 people on board.

The passenger jet belongs to China Eastern Airlines. The company said it has activated its emergency response mechanism and sent a work team to the crash site, while Boeing China said it is gathering more information about the crash.

Shares of China Eastern Airlines in Hong Kong were down 6.5 percent after the news of the plane crash broke.

The jet involved in the accident was a six-year-old Boeing 737-800 aircraft, according to Flightradar24, an aircraft flight-tracking website.

The popular 737-800 variant, a predecessor to the 737 MAX model, has a maximum seating capacity of 189 and is equipped with a CFM-56 engine, according to the planemaker's website.

According to a CCTV report, China Eastern grounded its fleet of 737-800 planes after the crash. The company has 109 of the aircraft in its fleet, according to FlightRadar24.

The crash comes when Boeing is inching toward regulatory approval in China for 737 MAX aircraft, its cash cow after two fatal crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia led to its grounding in the world's largest domestic aviation market.

(With input from Reuters)