Chinese state TV says 42 killed in plane crash

BEIJING - Chinese state television said 42 people died when a passenger plane crossed a runway in northeastern China on Tuesday and burst into flames. It says 47 others were rescued and taken to the hospital.

The official Xinhua News Agency said the Henan Airlines plane with 91 passengers and crew crashed in the province of Heilongjiang Yichun city.

China Central Television quoted Bangnan Sun, Deputy Director of Public Safety Heilonjiang Department, as saying that 42 bodies had been recovered and that 49 people were rescued.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for more information. APs earlier story is below.

(AP) - A Chinese passenger plane crossed a runway in the northeast of the country and burst into flames Tuesday, but state television said 49 of the 91 people aboard were rescued. The fate of the other passengers is unclear.

The Henan Airlines plane crashed in the province of Heilongjiang Yichun city, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Xinhua said more than 20 people were hospitalized.

China Central Television quoted Bangnan Sun, Deputy Director of Public Safety Heilonjiang Department, as saying that 49 people were rescued and the fire was extinguished.

Xuemei Wang, vice-mayor of Yichun, CCTV reported that three of the 49 were in hospital in critical condition, but gave no details.

The plane had taken off from the capital of Heilongjiang Harbin shortly before 9 pm (1300 GMT) and crashed during landing at the airport Lindu a little over an hour later.

An official nickname Qi Yichun the No. 1 People's Hospital said 30 people had been brought there for treatment, with most suffering broken bones.

A man only his last name to give Wang, Yichun the Rehabilitation Hospital, which burn specialists to the site, said 10 survivors were transferred to burns.

Eight survivors were on the Yichun Forest Hospital, said a duty officer nicknamed Zhou. He said he was not the nature of their injuries to get to know.

Henan Airlines is based in the central Chinese province of the same name and flies smaller regional jets, especially on routes in the north and northeast China. Formerly known as Kunpeng Airlines, the carrier relaunched Henan Airlines earlier this year.

Henan Airlines and many other regional Chinese airlines fly shorter routes have fought in recent years, lost the high-speed passenger rail lines that China has aggressively expanded.

An American company, Phoenix-based Mesa Air Group Inc., is an original investor in the company of Henan predecessor, Kunpeng, but sold its stake last year. Mesa operates regional services in the U.S. by Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and other airlines and is undergoing bankruptcy reorganization.

Full Tilt expansion of the Chinese aviation market in the 1990s led to a series of crashes that gave China the reputation of insecurity. The poor state of the government called for a drastic increase in the security of new systems for airlines to manage air traffic at airports.

The last major passenger plane crash in China in November 2004 when a plane crashed China Eastern soon in a lake in northern China, killing all 53 on board and two on the ground.

MD-11 cargo plane operated by Zimbabwe, on the basis of Avient Aviation crashed during takeoff from the main airport in Shanghai last November. Three American crew members died and four others were injured on board.

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