“Airport in China was deemed unsafe before crash”

Airport in China was deemed unsafe before crash

Posted: 25 Aug 2010 10:10 PM PDT

BEIJING — China's largest passenger airline deemed nighttime landings at a new airport in northeastern China unsafe a year before a Henan Airlines jet crashed there late Tuesday, killing 42 passengers and injuring 54.

China Southern Airlines, the country's largest passenger carrier, concluded that the Lindu airport, outside Yichun, a city of 1 million people in Heilongjiang province, was "in principle not suitable for night flights," according to a safety notice posted on a Chinese news organization's website. Daytime landings in rainy conditions were also ruled out for the airline, the notice said.

The airport, nestled in a thickly forested valley, opened last year, according to Chinese news media.

The crash also gave fresh fodder to critics who say a frenzy of airport building has led to lower safety standards. Lindu is one of 40 airports built in China in the past decade in a push to promote the nation's aviation industry, encourage tourism and boost local economies. The number of airline passengers in China more than tripled between 2000 and 2009, government statistics show.

Critics were already accusing the airline of lax standards, shoddy construction and overbuilding.

"Henan Airlines should not have been operating that flight," said Zhang Qihuai, a lawyer from the Lan Peng Law Firm in Beijing who represents victims of aviation accidents. He blamed in part the Civil Aviation Administration of China for permitting the flight.

"China's aviation industry has been growing rapidly, but blindly, for a long time," he said. "When it grows that fast, there will always be loopholes" in the safety regulations.

The crash was China's first major passenger-airline disaster since a China Eastern Airlines plane crashed in 2004, killing 55 people. China has recently tried to tighten safety rules and improve training.

Investigators continued to search Wednesday for clues that would explain why the plane, a Brazilian-made Embraer E-190, crashed and burst into flames at 9:36 p.m. Tuesday while trying to land on a fog-shrouded runway at the Lindu airport. The jet had taken off about 40 minutes earlier from the provincial capital of Harbin.

Investigators recovered two black boxes from the wreckage and were waiting to question the pilot, Qi Quanjun, who survived, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Xinhua also reported that Chinese carriers had previously complained of problems with E-190 aircraft, including cracks in the turbine plates and flight-control-system errors. China's Civil Aviation Administration organized a workshop in June to discuss the concerns, Xinhua said.

Embraer has 650 E-170 and E-190 model jets operating in 39 countries, according to the company, and until the Henan Airlines crash on Tuesday, there have been no fatal crashes of the 190. JetBlue, USAirways and Air Canada operate E-190s.

An official told Xinhua that crew members of the Henan Airlines flight reported they could see lights on the ground and requested a normal landing.

Survivors said the plane jolted so violently while trying to land that luggage flew off the overhead racks. One man, interviewed in a hospital bed by the state-controlled CCTV television network, said that after the jet hit the ground, smoke billowed from the rear of the plane and he feared suffocation.

"It was very strong," he said. "It looked like we had only two or three minutes left. I knew something bad was going to happen."

Material from the Los Angeles Times and The Associated Press is included in this report.

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