Chinese plane bursts into flames

A CHINESE passenger jet overshot a runway and burst into flames yesterday, but state television said 49 of the 91 people onboard had been rescued.

The Henan Airlines plane crashed in Heilongjiang province's Yichun city, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

China Central Television quoted Sun Bangnan, deputy director of the Heilonjiang Public Security Department, as saying that 49 people had been rescued and that the fire had been put out.

Wang Xuemei, the deputy mayor of Yichun, said three of the 49 hospitalised were in critical condition but gave no details.

The plane had taken off from Heilongjiang's capital of Harbin and crashed during landing at the Lindu airport a little more than an hour later.

Full-tilt expansion of Chinese air traffic in the 1990s led to a series of crashes that gave China the reputation of being unsafe. The poor record prompted the government to improve safety drastically, from airlines to new air traffic management systems at airports.

The last major passenger jet crash in China was in November 2004, when an China Eastern aircraft plunged into a lake in northern China, killing all 53 on board and two on the ground.