China says airport not responsible for plane crash

YICHUN, China (AP) - A top aviation official defended the safety of an airport in remote northeast China where a flight crashed while coming in for a night landing, raising questions about the facility's design, 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 one mile (1.5 kilometers) from the runway at Yichun city's Lindu Airport late 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 accident underscores the breakneck expansion of China's aviation industry in recent years and the struggles 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 - eager to develop tourism and other businesses to catch up with the country's economic boom.

Henan's board of directors fired the airline's general manager, Li Qiang, and appointed an acting manager to replace him, Xinhua said. Cao Bo, Li's replacement, served as the chief pilot of Shenzhen Airlines, the parent company of Henan Airlines.

Fifteen severely injured survivors were taken to bigger hospitals in Harbin, the provincial capital where the doomed flight had taken off, Xinhua said. They included five children with respiratory tract burns.

The crash was China's worst commercial air disaster in nearly six years. Investigators recovered the plane's black boxes and were waiting to question the pilot, Qi Quanjun, who survived but was badly injured, Xinhua said.

Shortly before the crash, Qi told air traffic controllers he saw the runway lights and was preparing to land, Xinhua quoted an Yichun city official as saying.