Airport reopens after plane crash killing 42
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The airport in Yichun, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, reopened Thursday afternoon with the first landing 40 hours after the deadliest commercial plane crash in China in nearly six years killed 42 people Tuesday night.
An Airbus 320 landed at Lindu Airport in Yichun at around 12:45 p.m., Xinhua reporters saw at the site.
The flight, run by China Southern Airlines, one of the country's leading carriers, came from China's capital Beijing at 9 a.m. and stopped over in Harbin before it left for Yichun at 12:01 p.m.
The exact number of passengers on board was not immediately known, though a clerk at the information service at Harbin's Taiping Airport estimated there were "more than 60 people".
"Some are family members of the victims," she told Xinhua in a telephone interview but did not give her name.
Before the landing, 329 family members had arrived at Yichun, according to sources with the city government.
While many relatives from Heilongjiang Province rushed to Yichun, a city about 350 km from Harbin, Tuesday night and Wednesday, the China Southern flight was the fastest route for those from other parts of the country to arrive at the remote border port.
The return flight is scheduled to take off from Yichun at around 1:30 p.m., stop over in Harbin again and head for its destination Beijing.
The number of passengers waiting to board the return flight is not known, as reporters are not allowed to enter the area.
Airport authorities and the airlines refused to say how many had gone through customs formalities. An insurance agency at the airport refused to reveal how many passengers had bought insurance for the flight.
China Southern was the only carrier to fly the Harbin-Yichun route before Henan Airlines, a small company named after the central province of Henan, launched the route about two weeks ago.
A Brazil-made ERJ-190 turbine jet of Henan Airlines crashed upon landing at the forests-surrounded Lindu Airport of Yichun City Tuesday night. Fifty-four people survived with injuries including the captain.
Lindu Airport, located in forest-covered mountain valleys about 9 km from downtown Yichun, opened on Aug. 27, 2009.
