Henan Airlines Flight 8387

Yichun Lindu Airport, in the Heilongjiang Province, has a runway long, wide, qualified to operate with single-aisle airliners like Airbus A320 and Boeing 737. The airport started operations on 26 August 2009, one year before the accident. On the day of the accident the airport had two flight controllers, both in good health and qualified. The final report also confirmed that all safety procedures had been performed correctly, that the airfield navigation and communications equipment was working correctly and that the runway was serviceable. On the night of the accident, the airport's meteorological observatory issued bulletins stating the visibility conditions. At 19:00, the visibility was , by 21:00 it was . At 21:08 the airport issued a special bulletin reporting that visibility was reduced to and decreasing rapidly. ==Accident==

Flight 8387 departed Harbin Airport at 20:51; at 21:10 the aircraft obtained the weather report from Yichun Airport and they were told the visibility was . The aircraft touched down around short of the runway, then caught fire. Details surrounding the crash were unclear in the immediate aftermath; a local official reported that the aircraft broke in two as it was landing and that passengers were thrown from the aircraft, though some survivors said that it remained intact until it came to rest short of the runway. Subsequent investigations concluded that the first impact was with trees, from the runway threshold, at 21:38:08. Thereafter, the aircraft hit the ground with its main landing gear, from the landing runway threshold, running on the ground a distance of , until the engines hit the ground. This impact ruptured the wing fuel tanks, spilling fuel and causing the fire. The survivors left the aircraft by the door behind the cockpit and through openings in the fuselage. Emergency exits could not be opened, and a large amount of smoke accumulated in the cabin. The pilot, who survived the accident, could not organize nor conduct the passengers' evacuation. ==Aircraft and crew==

The aircraft involved was an Embraer E190 LR, a twin-engined jet airliner registered in China as B-3130. It was built in Brazil in 2008, with the manufacturer's serial number 19000223, and delivered to the airline in December 2008. At the time of the accident, the aircraft had flown 5,109 hours and completed 4,712 flight cycles. The captain was 40-year-old Qi Quanjun and the first officer was 27-year-old Zhu Jianzhou. The final report did not state the flight crew's experience. ==Casualties==

The aircraft was in a two-class configuration with six business seats and 92 economy seats but at the time of accident had only 91 passengers. Captain Qi survived the accident, though he sustained heavy facial injuries. Nationalities of fatalities and survivors == Aftermath ==

Crews immediately began searching for survivors, although the efforts were hampered by the heavy fog. The Administration for Industry and Commerce of Henan Province announced days after the incident that it had rescinded the enterprise name registration of Henan Airlines, and demanded that the airline operator restore its original name of Kunpeng Airlines. The administration cited as reasons for its decision that the name Henan Airlines had caused public misunderstanding and greatly damaged the image of the province, which holds no stake in the airline operator. This move was immediately met with media criticism, which questioned the validity of the administration's interference with Henan Airlines' rights to choice of name. It was also revealed that the province had offered favorable conditions to attract the airline operator to adopt its current name, and celebrated the renaming afterwards. On August 31, Henan Airlines announced that it would pay 960,000 yuan (around $140,000 USD) to the relatives of each person killed in the crash. The payment was required under PRC civil aviation law. Flight 8387 was the last fatal air accident in China until the crash of China Eastern Airlines Flight 5735 which crashed nearly 12 years later, killing all 132 passengers and crew. ==Investigation==

Both the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) and the aircraft's manufacturer, Embraer, sent teams of investigators to the crash site. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board appointed an accredited representative, as the aircraft's General Electric CF34 engines were made in the U.S. The flight recorders were recovered at the scene and sent to Beijing for analysis. Investigators from the State Administration of Work Safety concluded that the captain, on his first flight into Yichun, switched off the autopilot and approached the runway covered by radiation fog despite the fact that a visibility of was below the minimum of . ==References==