May 8, 2002 4 min read

BEIJING (AP) – Its cabin lights darkened, a Chinese airliner carrying 112 people reported a fire on board and plunged into the sea off northeastern China late Tuesday, witnesses and official media said. Rescuers trolled murky waters for survivors, but expected none. More than 60 bodies had been retrieved by Wednesday morning, the government-run Xinhua News Agency said. There was no indication that anyone survived; among the debris found on the water, Xinhua said, was a charred foodservice pushcart broken in half.

China Northern Airlines Flight 6136 from Beijing to the northeastern city of Dalian went down in the bay just shy of its destination, Xinhua said. It was the second accident in one month involving a Chinese passenger jet and a blow to China’s efforts to improve airline safety.

Eight foreigners were reported aboard, including passengers from Japan and South Korea, Xinhua said. An official at China Northern Airlines who refused to give her name said 90 percent of the passengers were Chinese.

Dozens of rescue boats and volunteer fishermen, bathed in ghostly floodlights, converged at the crash site just off Dalian, a busy port 280 miles east of Beijing. Xinhua said the plane went into Dalian Bay at about 9:40 p.m. after the captain reported a fire in the cabin.

“We sent every boat we could find,” said a Dalian port authority official who gave only his surname, Liu. “When they heard the news, fishermen set off in their boats.”

Darkness hindered early rescue efforts. Dalian’s two biggest hospitals said they were on standby but had received no survivors or bodies. One Chinese Web site, Photocome.com, posted photos of bodies being pulled from the water.

“There is little possibility of any people surviving in the accident,” Xinhua said.

Xinhua said most of those aboard were residents of Dalian, which faces the sea on three sides.

The accident came at the end of China’s weeklong labor day holiday, a time when millions of Chinese travel within the country, suggesting many aboard were returning home for the resumption of business Wednesday morning.

The plane was an MD-82 airliner, Xinhua said – one of 24 such aircraft in what China Northern says is an 82-plane fleet. It was carrying 103 passengers and nine crew.

An emergency services officer at the airport, who said he had just returned from the crash site, said the plane had broken into pieces, which were floating on the water.

“It disintegrated,” the officer said. He refused to give his name or other details. Police reported they had begun DNA testing to identify victims.

Liu Jiqing, a loader at Dalian Port who was working Tuesday night, told Xinhua he saw the aircraft “making several circles before plunging into the sea.” Liu, who reported the crash to his dispatcher, said the plane had no lights on as it plummeted.

The aircraft took off at 8:37 p.m., and air traffic controllers lost contact with the flight at 9:32 p.m., eight minutes before its scheduled landing, Xinhua said. The plane went missing in the Bohai Sea 12 miles from Dalian’s airport.

The government sent an investigative team to Dalian – an indication of how seriously it takes the crash. China’s airline industry, plagued by a rash of accidents in the 1990s, has spent millions on new jetliners, pilot training and upgraded services to burnish its reputation.

The result: After hundreds of crash deaths in the 1990s, China’s airlines reported not a single fatality last year.

But on April 15, Air China Flight CA129 from Beijing slammed into a forest-covered mountain in heavy rain and fog while preparing to land at Kimhae Airport near Busan, South Korea’s second-largest city. South Korean officials have suggested pilot error was to blame.

“There’s been a real concerted effort on the part of Chinese authorities … They certainly pulled their socks up,” said Paul Lewis, U.S. East Coast editor for Flight International magazine. “A measure of how far they’ve come is how thorough the investigation will be and how public the investigation will be.”

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On the Net:

People’s Daily English: http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/ome.shtml

China Northern Airlines: http://www.cna.ln.cninfo.net/Eng

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