China plane crash leaves 42 people dead

The Flight, under Henan Airlines was carrying 96 passengers including five crew members. It headed to the ground in the vicinity of an airport in the northeastern city of Yichun.

The Civil Aviation Authority of China (CAAC) has declared 42 people dead in the accident, and highlighted past technical problems with the model of the plane, an ERJ-190 jet produced by the Brazilian company Embraer.
Many of the survivors were being treated in different hospitals, with the captain being one of the survivors, sustaining severe facial injuries.

One survivor said while in hospital, "The plane really started to jolt in a scary way -- the plane jolted five or six times very strongly."

Among the passengers on board the plane were a number of officials from China’s Ministry of Human Resources.

The crash took place just after 9.30 pm (1330 GMT) on Tuesday, around 40 minutes after take off from the provincial capital of Harbin. The wreckage of the plane was only two kilometres away from the runway.

The plane company Embraer said it sent a team of technicians to investigate the accident. Though the cause of the accident remains unclear, teams are looking to the plane’s black box flight data recorder for answers.

The crash is considered China’s first major air disaster since a China Eastern Airlines jet crashed in Inner Mongolia in November 2004, an accident which left 55 people dead.