By Ewen Boey – November 4th, 2010
Agence France Presse
A Qantas A380 made a dramatic emergency landing in Singapore Thursday, trailing smoke from a damaged engine, in the first mid-air emergency involving the Airbus superjumbo.
The double-decker plane, which had taken off from Singapore bound for Sydney carrying 433 passengers and 26 crew, dumped fuel over Indonesia before returning to the city-state’s Changi Airport.
According to a Changi Airport Group spokesperson, the A380 Qantas flight QF 32 departed Singapore Changi Airport at 0956 hours today. For technical reasons, the aircraft turned back to Changi and landed safely at 1146 hours.
Changi Airport Group’s Airport Emergency Service (AES) responded with six fire vehicles, in accordance with standard operating procedure for such incidents. In response to the pilot’s request, checks were conducted on the aircraft by AES.
Once the checks were completed, passengers and crew began disembarking from the aircraft at Runway 2. Buses were arranged to ferry them to the airport terminal. Disembarkation of all 469 passengers and crew on board was completed by 1340 hours.
When contacted, a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesperson from the Australian consulate in Canberra told Yahoo! Singapore, “The flight has landed safely at Changi Airport and there are no passengers or crew injured.”
“Australian consular officials are at Changi Airport ready to assist passengers if required. Qantas has arranged meals and accommodation for passengers and is urgently making arrangements for affected passengers to fly on to Sydney,” she added.
The Qantas Airbus A380 plane surrounded by fire engines after landing safely at Changi Airport.
One of the engines on the four-engined plane’s left wing was blackened and its rear casing was missing when it landed at Changi Airport.
Plane debris including what appeared to be part of a Qantas jet was found in the Indonesian town of Batam, after a mid-air explosion was heard on the ground.
“I didn’t see a plane crash but I heard a loud explosion in the air. There were metal shards coming down from the sky into an industrial area in Batam,” witness Noor Kanwa told AFP
Qantas CEO Alan Joyce says the airline is suspending all flights of its six Airbus A380 jetliners after a mid-air engine problem on a flight from Singapore.
Joyce told a news conference in Sydney on Thursday the suspension would remain in place until Qantas was satisfied that it was safe for its A380s to fly.
Joyce said “we will suspend those A380 services until we are completely confident that Qantas safety requirements have been met.”
Australian flag-carrier Qantas, which prides itself as the world’s safest airline with no fatal jetliner crashes in its 90-year history, blamed an “engine issue” for the incident but gave no further details.
“In line with procedure, the pilot sought priority clearance for its return to Singapore,” the airline said.
In light of Qantas grounding its entire A380 fleet, a Singapore Airlines spokesperson told Yahoo! Singapore, “There are no plans as of now to ground our A380 aircraft, and operations are continuing as normal. It is premature at this point to speculate and we will await advice from the aircraft and engine manufacturers as the investigation progresses.”
Debris photo on Indonesian TV (Twitter photo courtesy of @RodrigoBNO)
The A380′s very first commercial flight operated by SIA was on the same Singapore-Sydney route in October 2007.
Since then, fuel and computer glitches have grounded several A380s and at least one Air France flight was forced to turn around and land in New York after problems with its navigation system in November 2009.
And in April, a Qantas A380 superjumbo damaged tyres on landing from Singapore in Sydney, showing sparks and scaring passengers.
The plane is the largest passenger jet in operation, with 50 percent more floor space than Boeing’s veteran 747 jumbo. The A380 can carry up to 853 passengers in an all-economy configuration.
Qantas said on its website it has taken delivery of six of its 20 Airbus A380-800 aircraft, which it said represents the second-largest A380 order of any airline in the world.
Qantas said the A380 operates selected flights from Sydney and Melbourne to Los Angeles, Singapore and London.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Friday, October 29, 2010
Remembering SQ006: 10 years on
By Ion Danker – October 29th, 2010
From “surviving to winning” – that’s how former Singapore Airlines (SIA) pilot Cyrano Latiff describes how he’s turned his life around since surviving Singapore’s worst-ever aircraft disaster.
Then a First Officer with Singapore Airlines, Cyrano was one of three pilots in the cockpit of SQ 006, the SQ Boeing 747-412 jet that crashed on a rainy night at Taiwan’s Chiang Kai-Shek airport on 31 October, 2000.
83 of the 179 passengers on board died after the Singapore flight that was bound for Los Angeles ploughed into a cluster of heavy construction equipment as it tried to take off from a runway in bad, stormy weather. The plane broke into several pieces upon impact as explosions ripped through the aircraft’s entire middle section.
Among the dead were 26 Taiwanese, 24 Americans and 12 Singaporeans and Indians.
Speaking to Yahoo! Singapore in an exclusive interview ahead of the 10th anniversary of the crash this Sunday, Cyrano described the entire experience as “humbling”.
“After going through this, you realise everyone is important to you,” said the 46-year-old Singaporean, who had been flying with SIA for six years before the night of the tragedy.
After having his contract terminated by SIA in 2002, Cyrano joined Lufthansa as an aeronautical consultant for two years. He then ventured into the food and beverage industry before becoming a lecturer for the Diploma in Aviation Management & Services at Temasek Polytechnic’s (TP) Engineering School in 2008.
Latiff Cyrano became a lecturer at Temasek Polytechnic, teaching Aviation Management & Services since 2008.
Life for the married father of four since the crash has been anything but smooth.
Recalling that fateful day ten years ago and the immediate scenes of panic and chaos that ensued after the crash, he said, “The fire was like flames of a furnace from the lower deck as I started to call everyone to jump from the upper deck to evacuate the burning plane.”
“So I assessed the situation, and tried to kick the burnt slide. I thought if I jumped on it first, it might ‘untangle’. After I took the plunge, everyone saw it was possible to make it down to the tarmac so we started getting people to jump,” said Cyrano, who was the flight’s co-pilot.
As the remaining passengers made it to safety, Cyrano described what he saw when he glanced sideways.
“I was stunned when I saw the plane lying on its belly without the landing gears. The aircraft had broken up and its skin was burning away. But the most important thing was making sure everyone was evacuated safely,” he said, as he showed the scar he suffered from a deep gash during the jump.
Firefighters putting out the blaze on SQ006 ten years ago. (AFP Photo)
Cyrano and the other two pilots, Captain Foong Chee Kong and First Officer Ng Kheng Leng, were made to stay in Taiwan as investigations got underway after the crash. They were kept away from the Taiwanese media throughout that period as anger and bitter finger-pointing reached fever-pitch.
Said Cyrano, “We stayed in different locations and moved around, as the Taiwan media were trying to track us down and each day, the tabloids ran big stories of the accident. It came to a point where security personnel were assigned to us.”
The “scary” moment came after 52 days when the pilots were finally allowed to leave Taiwan and return to Singapore.
“We had to slip through Taiwan customs as if we were tourists. I remembered our bodyguards left us after entering the first door of the airport and the three of us went our separate ways to avoid being recognised by the local and international media,” he said.
Describing what happened next at the immigration counter, he said, “As our passports were burned from the accident, I gave a substitute travel document to the Taiwanese immigration officer who looked at it before holding up the letter and loudly proclaiming, ‘Is this your document?’.”
“The next thing I knew, a large group of people came charging forward from behind the pillars, cameras appeared out of nowhere and I thought to myself, ‘How could these guys manage to get into this restricted area?’” said Cyrano, who revealed his sense of helplessness after realising the Taiwanese media were on a witchhunt to find someone to blame for the crash.
He added that the reporters and photographers started surging forward, following him all the way to the boarding area, before he boarded his flight back to Singapore.
Worse was to follow when he returned to Taipei two years later after investigations into the crash concluded.
After being briefed by airport officials on the plane before arriving in Taiwan, he said, “The area was cordoned off for us to leave the plane but you could see the media lunging forward. It came to a point where the media came rushing towards us and I remember our bodyguards signaling us to follow them while the rest came to shield us as we fought our way to the vehicle.”
Crash investigators inspecting the remains of SQ006. (AFP Photo)
The final investigation report issued by the Taiwan Aviation Safety Council (ASC) on 24 April 2002, blamed the flight crew for not taking off from the correct runway, despite having all the relevant charts. As a result, the report said the pilots were unaware the aircraft had entered the wrong runway, which then had an area under construction.
However, Singapore officials disputed ACS’ report and said that it failed to present a complete account of the incident, as it appeared to pin full responsibility on the SQ 006 flight crew and played down equally valid contributing factors.
According to reports, the team from Singapore that participated in the investigation felt that the lightings and signages at the airport did not measure up to international standards. It added that critical lights were missing or not working, and no barriers or markings were placed at the start of the closed runway, which would have alerted the flight crew that they were on the wrong runway.
Is he still troubled by what happened ten years ago?
“I don’t think I am, even though I do still think about it. It was an accident. My conscience is clear and I managed to turn things around by positioning things differently,” he said.
“Moving ahead, I am keen to get back into the cockpit, pick things up after ten years and experience commercial flying again.”
Read more about Latiff Cyrano’s remarkable story and how he rebuilt his life since the crash in Part 2 of “Remembering SQ006: 10 years on” on Monday.
From “surviving to winning” – that’s how former Singapore Airlines (SIA) pilot Cyrano Latiff describes how he’s turned his life around since surviving Singapore’s worst-ever aircraft disaster.
Then a First Officer with Singapore Airlines, Cyrano was one of three pilots in the cockpit of SQ 006, the SQ Boeing 747-412 jet that crashed on a rainy night at Taiwan’s Chiang Kai-Shek airport on 31 October, 2000.
83 of the 179 passengers on board died after the Singapore flight that was bound for Los Angeles ploughed into a cluster of heavy construction equipment as it tried to take off from a runway in bad, stormy weather. The plane broke into several pieces upon impact as explosions ripped through the aircraft’s entire middle section.
Among the dead were 26 Taiwanese, 24 Americans and 12 Singaporeans and Indians.
Speaking to Yahoo! Singapore in an exclusive interview ahead of the 10th anniversary of the crash this Sunday, Cyrano described the entire experience as “humbling”.
“After going through this, you realise everyone is important to you,” said the 46-year-old Singaporean, who had been flying with SIA for six years before the night of the tragedy.
After having his contract terminated by SIA in 2002, Cyrano joined Lufthansa as an aeronautical consultant for two years. He then ventured into the food and beverage industry before becoming a lecturer for the Diploma in Aviation Management & Services at Temasek Polytechnic’s (TP) Engineering School in 2008.
Latiff Cyrano became a lecturer at Temasek Polytechnic, teaching Aviation Management & Services since 2008.
Life for the married father of four since the crash has been anything but smooth.
Recalling that fateful day ten years ago and the immediate scenes of panic and chaos that ensued after the crash, he said, “The fire was like flames of a furnace from the lower deck as I started to call everyone to jump from the upper deck to evacuate the burning plane.”
“So I assessed the situation, and tried to kick the burnt slide. I thought if I jumped on it first, it might ‘untangle’. After I took the plunge, everyone saw it was possible to make it down to the tarmac so we started getting people to jump,” said Cyrano, who was the flight’s co-pilot.
As the remaining passengers made it to safety, Cyrano described what he saw when he glanced sideways.
“I was stunned when I saw the plane lying on its belly without the landing gears. The aircraft had broken up and its skin was burning away. But the most important thing was making sure everyone was evacuated safely,” he said, as he showed the scar he suffered from a deep gash during the jump.
Firefighters putting out the blaze on SQ006 ten years ago. (AFP Photo)
Cyrano and the other two pilots, Captain Foong Chee Kong and First Officer Ng Kheng Leng, were made to stay in Taiwan as investigations got underway after the crash. They were kept away from the Taiwanese media throughout that period as anger and bitter finger-pointing reached fever-pitch.
Said Cyrano, “We stayed in different locations and moved around, as the Taiwan media were trying to track us down and each day, the tabloids ran big stories of the accident. It came to a point where security personnel were assigned to us.”
The “scary” moment came after 52 days when the pilots were finally allowed to leave Taiwan and return to Singapore.
“We had to slip through Taiwan customs as if we were tourists. I remembered our bodyguards left us after entering the first door of the airport and the three of us went our separate ways to avoid being recognised by the local and international media,” he said.
Describing what happened next at the immigration counter, he said, “As our passports were burned from the accident, I gave a substitute travel document to the Taiwanese immigration officer who looked at it before holding up the letter and loudly proclaiming, ‘Is this your document?’.”
“The next thing I knew, a large group of people came charging forward from behind the pillars, cameras appeared out of nowhere and I thought to myself, ‘How could these guys manage to get into this restricted area?’” said Cyrano, who revealed his sense of helplessness after realising the Taiwanese media were on a witchhunt to find someone to blame for the crash.
He added that the reporters and photographers started surging forward, following him all the way to the boarding area, before he boarded his flight back to Singapore.
Worse was to follow when he returned to Taipei two years later after investigations into the crash concluded.
After being briefed by airport officials on the plane before arriving in Taiwan, he said, “The area was cordoned off for us to leave the plane but you could see the media lunging forward. It came to a point where the media came rushing towards us and I remember our bodyguards signaling us to follow them while the rest came to shield us as we fought our way to the vehicle.”
Crash investigators inspecting the remains of SQ006. (AFP Photo)
The final investigation report issued by the Taiwan Aviation Safety Council (ASC) on 24 April 2002, blamed the flight crew for not taking off from the correct runway, despite having all the relevant charts. As a result, the report said the pilots were unaware the aircraft had entered the wrong runway, which then had an area under construction.
However, Singapore officials disputed ACS’ report and said that it failed to present a complete account of the incident, as it appeared to pin full responsibility on the SQ 006 flight crew and played down equally valid contributing factors.
According to reports, the team from Singapore that participated in the investigation felt that the lightings and signages at the airport did not measure up to international standards. It added that critical lights were missing or not working, and no barriers or markings were placed at the start of the closed runway, which would have alerted the flight crew that they were on the wrong runway.
Is he still troubled by what happened ten years ago?
“I don’t think I am, even though I do still think about it. It was an accident. My conscience is clear and I managed to turn things around by positioning things differently,” he said.
“Moving ahead, I am keen to get back into the cockpit, pick things up after ten years and experience commercial flying again.”
Read more about Latiff Cyrano’s remarkable story and how he rebuilt his life since the crash in Part 2 of “Remembering SQ006: 10 years on” on Monday.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Miracle as 36 survive Venezuelan plane crash
AFP - 56 minutes ago
CARACAS (AFP) - – Fifteen people died in a plane crash in eastern Venezuela, but 36 others miraculously survived after the pilot alerted air traffic control that something was wrong moments before disaster struck.
The plane, carrying 47 passengers and four crew Monday from the Venezuelan Caribbean resort island of Margarita, burst into flames as it hit the ground near a steel works owned by Sidor, in mainland Bolivar state.
"In total we have 36 survivors and 15 dead. The survivors are being looked after," said Transport and Communications Minister Francisco Garces.
"Given the condition of the plane, I think we were very lucky."
Most of the survivors had sustained burns and were traumatized by the event, but none was in life-threatening condition, Garces said.
The Conviasa Airlines ATR-42-300 plane went down about six miles (10 kilometers) from Puerto Ordaz, on the Orinoco River. It broke in two and caught fire as it hit the ground. The cause of the crash was not immediately clear.
Officials said the quick response by the emergency services after the pilot warned air traffic control that the flight was in trouble prevented a higher death toll.
Rescuers arrived at the scene quickly with medical helicopters to fly the wounded to local hospitals that had been placed on alert. A burns unit was also on stand-by to treat those caught in the blazing wreckage.
"There's been a miracle here," said Bolivar state Governor Francisco Rangel Gomez.
President Hugo Chavez issued a statement expressing his "deepest... condolences and solidarity" with the victims of the crash.
"All of us in Venezuela are in mourning, heavy with sadness for this tragedy," he said, and announced three days of official mourning across the South American country.
The plane went down at a site mostly used by Sidor to store scrap industrial material. None of its employees was injured in the crash, but they were among the first at the scene helping rescue passengers, Rangel Gomez said.
The governor said the pilot appeared to have "lost control" of the plane and radioed a control tower to warn that the flight was having technical difficulties.
A spokesperson for ATR, the aircraft manufacturer, said the firm was investigating the accident.
"We are working in close cooperation with the company (Conviasa) and authorities to understand the causes of the accident. At the moment we do not know what caused it," a spokesman in Paris told AFP.
ATR aircraft like the one that crashed Monday are made by a European consortium composed of EADS and Alenia.
The firm, based in Toulouse, France, employs some 850 people and is considered a global leader in the manufacture of small turbo-propelled planes with 50-75 seats, with some 52 percent of the market.
It has received over 1,000 orders from 150 companies in 80 countries since its creation, and made around 1.1 billion euros in 2009.0
Conviasa is a state-owned airline started in 2004 that flies to destinations as varied as Tehran, Damascus, Buenos Aires and several Caribbean nations.
The last major air accident in Venezuela was in February 2008 and also involved an ATR-42-300, which crashed in the Andes, killing 46.
Three years earlier, 160 people were killed in a Venezuelan crash that was one of the world's deadliest ever.
The flight was en route to Martinique and the majority of those killed -- 152 of the passengers -- were from the small Caribbean island. An investigation into the disaster later concluded human error was to blame.
In a separate case of transport trouble involving Margarita, Venezuela's busiest resort destination, authorities also said Monday they rescued 21 passengers who went missing over the weekend on three small watercraft.
Interior Minister Tareck El Aissami said authorities however were still searching for 10 people on one of the three boats that had gone missing Saturday on crossings from Los Testigos an island group north of Margarita.
CARACAS (AFP) - – Fifteen people died in a plane crash in eastern Venezuela, but 36 others miraculously survived after the pilot alerted air traffic control that something was wrong moments before disaster struck.
The plane, carrying 47 passengers and four crew Monday from the Venezuelan Caribbean resort island of Margarita, burst into flames as it hit the ground near a steel works owned by Sidor, in mainland Bolivar state.
"In total we have 36 survivors and 15 dead. The survivors are being looked after," said Transport and Communications Minister Francisco Garces.
"Given the condition of the plane, I think we were very lucky."
Most of the survivors had sustained burns and were traumatized by the event, but none was in life-threatening condition, Garces said.
The Conviasa Airlines ATR-42-300 plane went down about six miles (10 kilometers) from Puerto Ordaz, on the Orinoco River. It broke in two and caught fire as it hit the ground. The cause of the crash was not immediately clear.
Officials said the quick response by the emergency services after the pilot warned air traffic control that the flight was in trouble prevented a higher death toll.
Rescuers arrived at the scene quickly with medical helicopters to fly the wounded to local hospitals that had been placed on alert. A burns unit was also on stand-by to treat those caught in the blazing wreckage.
"There's been a miracle here," said Bolivar state Governor Francisco Rangel Gomez.
President Hugo Chavez issued a statement expressing his "deepest... condolences and solidarity" with the victims of the crash.
"All of us in Venezuela are in mourning, heavy with sadness for this tragedy," he said, and announced three days of official mourning across the South American country.
The plane went down at a site mostly used by Sidor to store scrap industrial material. None of its employees was injured in the crash, but they were among the first at the scene helping rescue passengers, Rangel Gomez said.
The governor said the pilot appeared to have "lost control" of the plane and radioed a control tower to warn that the flight was having technical difficulties.
A spokesperson for ATR, the aircraft manufacturer, said the firm was investigating the accident.
"We are working in close cooperation with the company (Conviasa) and authorities to understand the causes of the accident. At the moment we do not know what caused it," a spokesman in Paris told AFP.
ATR aircraft like the one that crashed Monday are made by a European consortium composed of EADS and Alenia.
The firm, based in Toulouse, France, employs some 850 people and is considered a global leader in the manufacture of small turbo-propelled planes with 50-75 seats, with some 52 percent of the market.
It has received over 1,000 orders from 150 companies in 80 countries since its creation, and made around 1.1 billion euros in 2009.0
Conviasa is a state-owned airline started in 2004 that flies to destinations as varied as Tehran, Damascus, Buenos Aires and several Caribbean nations.
The last major air accident in Venezuela was in February 2008 and also involved an ATR-42-300, which crashed in the Andes, killing 46.
Three years earlier, 160 people were killed in a Venezuelan crash that was one of the world's deadliest ever.
The flight was en route to Martinique and the majority of those killed -- 152 of the passengers -- were from the small Caribbean island. An investigation into the disaster later concluded human error was to blame.
In a separate case of transport trouble involving Margarita, Venezuela's busiest resort destination, authorities also said Monday they rescued 21 passengers who went missing over the weekend on three small watercraft.
Interior Minister Tareck El Aissami said authorities however were still searching for 10 people on one of the three boats that had gone missing Saturday on crossings from Los Testigos an island group north of Margarita.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Air France staff protest move to separate kids from adults
Posted: 31 August 2010 0104 hrs
PARIS: Air France cabin crew fear a new rule to protect children from paedophile passengers could expose youngsters to greater risk in the event of an accident, labour unions said Monday.
The airline issued instructions in February that unaccompanied minors must not sit next to adults unless a plane is fully booked, following complaints from parents that some had been molested in flight.
But the UNAC and Alter unions, which represent Air France cabin crew, said this rule contradicts previous advice that children must sit near responsible persons who can help them don oxygen masks if the cabin depressurises.
"This flies in the face of child safety," said Alter official Guillaume Pollard. "In an emergency or a depressurisation an adult should remain seated and fit a child's mask. How can they do this if they're across the aisle?"
A copy of the seating rules, seen by AFP, says children travelling without a parent or guardian must be given a block of seats on their own, with an adult in the next section across the aisle to keep an eye on them.
Several cabin crew, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that they suspect Air France is more concerned about the possibility of lawsuits linked to alleged child abuse than by more general in-flight safety.
Contacted by AFP, Air France would not say how many cases of alleged molestation had been reported. - AFP/fa
PARIS: Air France cabin crew fear a new rule to protect children from paedophile passengers could expose youngsters to greater risk in the event of an accident, labour unions said Monday.
The airline issued instructions in February that unaccompanied minors must not sit next to adults unless a plane is fully booked, following complaints from parents that some had been molested in flight.
But the UNAC and Alter unions, which represent Air France cabin crew, said this rule contradicts previous advice that children must sit near responsible persons who can help them don oxygen masks if the cabin depressurises.
"This flies in the face of child safety," said Alter official Guillaume Pollard. "In an emergency or a depressurisation an adult should remain seated and fit a child's mask. How can they do this if they're across the aisle?"
A copy of the seating rules, seen by AFP, says children travelling without a parent or guardian must be given a block of seats on their own, with an adult in the next section across the aisle to keep an eye on them.
Several cabin crew, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that they suspect Air France is more concerned about the possibility of lawsuits linked to alleged child abuse than by more general in-flight safety.
Contacted by AFP, Air France would not say how many cases of alleged molestation had been reported. - AFP/fa
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
43 dead in China plane crash: state media
Posted: 24 August 2010 2345 hrs
BEIJING: A Chinese airliner crashed and burst into flames while attempting to land in northeast China on Tuesday, killing 43 people on board, state media reported.
The Henan Airlines plane overshot the runway while trying to touch down at an airport in the city of Yichun in remote Heilongjiang province, the official Xinhua news agency said.
Hua Jingwei, an official with the Communist Party in Yichun, told Xinhua that 43 bodies had been recovered from the wreckage and 53 survivors taken to hospital for treatment.
Hua said the plane broke into two pieces as it approached the runway, Xinhua reported, and some passengers were thrown out of the cabin before the jet hit the ground.
There were 91 passengers, including five children, and five crew on board, Xinhua said, citing a source at the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).
The crash occurred shortly after 9:30 pm (1330 GMT) near Yichun's Lindu airport, around 40 minutes after the plane took off from Harbin, the provincial capital, Xinhua said.
Television images showed teams of firefighters using hoses to douse the blazing wreckage of the aircraft.
Wang Xuemei, the vice mayor of Yichun who oversaw the rescue efforts, said most of the survivors taken to hospital had suffered broken bones.
The aircraft was an ERJ-190 jet, Xinhua said, a passenger aircraft manufactured by Brazilian aerospace conglomerate Embraer.
A spokesman for the constructor said the company did not yet have "an official position" on the accident.
The cause of the crash was still unclear and work teams searched through the wreckage for the plane's black box flight data recorder.
But Xinhua said Chinese carriers using ERJ-190s had reported technical problems in the past and the CAAC called a workshop last June to discuss the issues.
Notes from the meeting - which involved Kunpeng Airlines, as Henan Airlines was previously known - showed that breaks of the turbine plates and flight control system errors were among the problems, Xinhua said.
Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang led a team of transport, safety and security officials to Yichun to deal with the aftermath of the crash and begin investigation work, Xinhua said.
The CAAC has also sent a 20-strong group of technicians and officials to the scene, it said.
Lindu airport is in a forest around nine kilometres outside of central Yichun, a city of one million inhabitants around 150 kilometres from the border with Russia.
Henan Airlines, based in the central province of the same name, launched the Yichun-Harbin service a year ago and operated the route three times a week, Xinhua said.
The carrier is run by Shenzhen Airlines, based in the southern city of the same name.
Xinhua said CAAC records showed Tuesday's crash was China's first major air disaster in more than five years, since a China Eastern Airlines jet crashed in Baotou City in Inner Mongolia, killing 53 people on board and two on the ground.
The Yichun crash came a week after a North Korean military aircraft came down on a house in Liaoning province, also in China's northeast, killing the pilot.
- AFP/ms/de
BEIJING: A Chinese airliner crashed and burst into flames while attempting to land in northeast China on Tuesday, killing 43 people on board, state media reported.
The Henan Airlines plane overshot the runway while trying to touch down at an airport in the city of Yichun in remote Heilongjiang province, the official Xinhua news agency said.
Hua Jingwei, an official with the Communist Party in Yichun, told Xinhua that 43 bodies had been recovered from the wreckage and 53 survivors taken to hospital for treatment.
Hua said the plane broke into two pieces as it approached the runway, Xinhua reported, and some passengers were thrown out of the cabin before the jet hit the ground.
There were 91 passengers, including five children, and five crew on board, Xinhua said, citing a source at the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).
The crash occurred shortly after 9:30 pm (1330 GMT) near Yichun's Lindu airport, around 40 minutes after the plane took off from Harbin, the provincial capital, Xinhua said.
Television images showed teams of firefighters using hoses to douse the blazing wreckage of the aircraft.
Wang Xuemei, the vice mayor of Yichun who oversaw the rescue efforts, said most of the survivors taken to hospital had suffered broken bones.
The aircraft was an ERJ-190 jet, Xinhua said, a passenger aircraft manufactured by Brazilian aerospace conglomerate Embraer.
A spokesman for the constructor said the company did not yet have "an official position" on the accident.
The cause of the crash was still unclear and work teams searched through the wreckage for the plane's black box flight data recorder.
But Xinhua said Chinese carriers using ERJ-190s had reported technical problems in the past and the CAAC called a workshop last June to discuss the issues.
Notes from the meeting - which involved Kunpeng Airlines, as Henan Airlines was previously known - showed that breaks of the turbine plates and flight control system errors were among the problems, Xinhua said.
Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang led a team of transport, safety and security officials to Yichun to deal with the aftermath of the crash and begin investigation work, Xinhua said.
The CAAC has also sent a 20-strong group of technicians and officials to the scene, it said.
Lindu airport is in a forest around nine kilometres outside of central Yichun, a city of one million inhabitants around 150 kilometres from the border with Russia.
Henan Airlines, based in the central province of the same name, launched the Yichun-Harbin service a year ago and operated the route three times a week, Xinhua said.
The carrier is run by Shenzhen Airlines, based in the southern city of the same name.
Xinhua said CAAC records showed Tuesday's crash was China's first major air disaster in more than five years, since a China Eastern Airlines jet crashed in Baotou City in Inner Mongolia, killing 53 people on board and two on the ground.
The Yichun crash came a week after a North Korean military aircraft came down on a house in Liaoning province, also in China's northeast, killing the pilot.
- AFP/ms/de
Monday, August 16, 2010
Jetliner crashes on Colombian island; 1 killed
BOGOTA, Colombia – A Boeing 737 jetliner with 131 passengers aboard crashed on landing and broke into three pieces at a Colombian island in the Caribbean early Monday. The region's governor said it was a miracle that only one person died.
Colombian Air Force Col. David Barrero said officials were investigating reports the plane had been hit by lightning before crashing at 1:49 a.m. (3:49 a.m. EDT; 0649 GMT) while landing at San Andres Island, a resort island of 78,000 people about 120 miles (190 kilometers) east of the Nicaraguan coast.
San Andres Gov. Pedro Gallardo said 125 passengers and six crew members had been aboard, but the only person killed was Amar Fernandez de Barreto, 65. At least five people were reported injured.
"It was a miracle and we have to give thanks to God," the governor said.
Barrero, commander of the Caribbean Air Group, said by telephone from San Andres that "the skill of the pilot kept the plane from colliding with the airport."
Barrero said the 7,545-foot (2,300-meter) runway had been closed because parts of the plane were still scattered across it.
The Aires jet had left the Colombian capital of Bogota at about midnight.
Police Gen. Orlando Paez said by telephone that a group of police officers who had been waiting at the airport for the plane to take them back to the Colombian mainland aided in rescuing the victims.
(This version CORRECTS source on injured as governor sted colonel.)
Colombian Air Force Col. David Barrero said officials were investigating reports the plane had been hit by lightning before crashing at 1:49 a.m. (3:49 a.m. EDT; 0649 GMT) while landing at San Andres Island, a resort island of 78,000 people about 120 miles (190 kilometers) east of the Nicaraguan coast.
San Andres Gov. Pedro Gallardo said 125 passengers and six crew members had been aboard, but the only person killed was Amar Fernandez de Barreto, 65. At least five people were reported injured.
"It was a miracle and we have to give thanks to God," the governor said.
Barrero, commander of the Caribbean Air Group, said by telephone from San Andres that "the skill of the pilot kept the plane from colliding with the airport."
Barrero said the 7,545-foot (2,300-meter) runway had been closed because parts of the plane were still scattered across it.
The Aires jet had left the Colombian capital of Bogota at about midnight.
Police Gen. Orlando Paez said by telephone that a group of police officers who had been waiting at the airport for the plane to take them back to the Colombian mainland aided in rescuing the victims.
(This version CORRECTS source on injured as governor sted colonel.)
Saturday, August 7, 2010
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