Thaindian News

BEIJING (BNO NEWS) — At least 49 people were injured after a passenger plane carrying nearly 100 people overshot the runway at an airport in northeast China on Tuesday evening, officials said, but few details were immediately available.

The aircraft belonging to regional Henan Airlines overshot the runway at an airport in Yichun City, a city in Heilongjiang Province, at around 9.36 p.m. local time. A total of 96 people were on board, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAA).

The CAA, which will investigate the cause of the accident, said a total of 91 passengers and five crew members were on board the aircraft, including five children.

Heilongjiang provincial civil aviation authorities said the Embraer E190 aircraft, with tail number VD8387, skidded off the end of the runway as it was landing at the airport. It broke into two and caught fire.

Officials said at least 49 people had been rescued from the aircraft and said all except three passengers were in a stable condition. The other three were in a serious condition, but it was not immediately clear if the other passengers and crew had survived the accident.

The fire that engulfed the aircraft after the crash was put out about two and a half hours after the accident, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

The Henan Airlines aircraft had departed the provincial capital of Harbin at 8.51 p.m. local time, but it was not immediately clear if Yichun City was its destination. The website of the airline, which was previously known as Kunpeng Airlines, did not specify Yichun City as one of its regular destinations.

Rescue operations are continuing, and CAA said it sent a team of investigators to the scene of the accident to investigate the cause of the crash.