CHINESE AVIATION officials yesterday sifted through the wreckage of the Embraer E-190 passenger jet that crashed and burned while trying to land at night on a fogbound runway, killing 42 people and injuring 54.
Black boxes from the Henan Airlines flight were recovered at the newly built Lindu airport in the Heilongjiang province city of Yichun, but the cause of the crash was unknown. There were, however, no signs of sabotage and the aircraft did not break apart mid-air, as reported previously.
The death toll was revised to 42 from 43 after it emerged that one body that had been torn apart in the disaster had been counted as two.
The aircraft crashed at 9.36pm on Tuesday, some 40 minutes after it took off from the provincial capital Harbin. It was China’s first major air crash in six years.
Airline China Southern decided last August to avoid night takeoffs and landings at Yichun, switching its daily flight instead to a daytime flight from Harbin. Technicians said they were worried about the surrounding terrain, lighting on the runway, and wind and weather conditions.
“Principally, there should be no night flights at Yichun airport,” ran a notice from China Southern’s Heilongjiang branch that was posted online.
Survivors among the 96 passengers and crew described scenes of horror and their escapes through flames and broken holes in the fuselage.
Eight-year-old Ji Yifan told Xinhua news agency he was saved by another passenger. “Someone dragged me to the emergency exit door and threw me out before I realised what was going on,” he said.
He said the evacuation slide, which was on fire, broke as he was sliding down.
Among the dead were cabin crew member Lou Lu and her husband Zhou Haobin. The captain Qi Quanjun was a 40-year-old former People’s Liberation Army pilot. He survived the crash but was badly hurt and was unable to speak because of severe injuries to his face, Xinhua reported.
China had kept a remarkable air travel safety record of about 2,100 days – or 69 months – without accidents before Tuesday’s tragedy, statistics from the Chinese Civil Aviation Authority show.
The last major passenger jet crash in China was in November 2004, when a China Eastern aircraft plunged into a lake in northern China, killing all 53 people on board and two on the ground.