Beijing : A Chinese passenger jet crashed on landing in the northeast province of Heilongjiang, killing at least 42 people in the nation’s first fatal commercial aviation accident in more than five years.
The Embraer ERJ-190 jet operated by Henan Airlines crashed with 96 aboard at 9:36 p.m. local time yesterday, the Civil Aviation Administration of China, or CAAC, said on its website. The plane broke in two, throwing some passengers from the cabin, before catching fire, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Empresa Brasileira de Aeronautica SA, the plane’s manufacturer, has sent a team of technicians to China to help local authorities investigate, according to an e-mailed statement. The accident is the nation’s worst air disaster since a China Eastern Airlines Corp. plane crashed into a frozen lake in Inner Mongolia shortly after takeoff in November 2004, killing 53 people.
State broadcaster China Central Television’s news channel read out the names and the national identification card numbers of passengers killed in yesterday’s crash during its broadcast today. Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang traveled to the site of the crash late yesterday, Xinhua reported.
The 40-minute flight departed from the city of Harbin at 8:51 p.m. local time for Yichun, CAAC said. Yichun’s airport has been shut, the regulator said. Henan Air has canceled all its flights today departing from Harbin, the China News Service reported.
Black Box
Authorities have recovered both black boxes from the airplane, the CAAC News, a newspaper published by the aviation regulator, reported.
Air China Ltd., the world’s largest airline by market value, controls Shenzhen Air, which in turn owns Henan Air, according to Huang Bin, a spokesman for Air China. Tracy Chen, a spokeswoman for Embraer in Beijing, declined to comment.
The China Eastern flight that crash in 2004 was a Bombardier Inc. CRJ-200 plane.
Henan Airlines, formerly called Kunpeng Airlines and operated by Shenzhen Airlines, started flights linking Harbin, the provincial capital, with Yichun a year ago, Xinhua said. Lindu Airport is in a forested valley about 9 kilometers (5.6 miles) from downtown Yichun, a city of about a million people, Xinhua said.