27 August 2010 / AP, YICHUN
A top aviation official defended the safety of an airport in remote northeast China where a plane crashed while coming in for a night landing -- the country’s worst commercial air disaster in nearly six years, a state news agency reported Thursday.
Forty-two of the 96 people on board the Henan Airlines flight were killed and the fuselage of the Embraer 190 jet was burned to bits in a forest valley about a mile (1.5 kilometers) from the runway at Yichun city’s Lindu Airport late on Tuesday. A major Chinese airline -- China Southern -- last year scrapped night flights into Yichun, citing concerns about the surrounding terrain, runway lighting and weather conditions. But Li Jian, vice director of the Civil Aviation Authority of China, said the airport in Heilongjiang province met all safety requirements. “It is no comparison to big airports, but the safety standards are guaranteed,” Li was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency. The airport was built to handle nighttime flights, he said. The airport was closed after the crash on Tuesday night but reopened midday on Thursday. The accident underscores the breakneck expansion of China’s aviation industry in recent years and the struggle of regulators to keep up. Airports have proliferated as have small regional airlines, reaching into remote cities like Yichun -- 90 miles (150 kilometers) from the Russian border -- that are eager to develop tourism and other industries to catch up with the country’s economic boom.
