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YICHUN, Heilongjiang, Aug. 27 (Xinhua) -- The shadow of grief lingered over Lindu Airport in Yichun, a remote mountainous city in northeast China Friday as relatives awaited the DNA results that would identify the bodies of loved ones killed in the country's deadliest commercial plane crash since 2004.
An Airbus 320, owned by China Southern Airlines, landed in the early afternoon, the second arrival since the airport reopened the previous day.
Only 48 passengers were aboard the aircraft, which has more than 100 seats. Some were the next of kin of crash victims.
Until Monday, the small, forest-surrounded airport in a mountain valley in Heilongjiang Province, 9 km from the downtown area, had been busy with large crowds of holidaymakers and business travelers.
The city known as China's "capital of woodlands" is an idyllic resort from June to September. Local residents said air tickets to Yichun were hard-won in summer and passengers needed to make reservations at least two days in advance to secure an economy class seat.
The brief travel rush, which lasts no more than four months a year,seems a good reason to build an airport in Yichun, though the city is only two and a half hours' drive from the nearest airport in the neighboring city of Jiamusi.
Friday marks the first anniversary of the airport's inauguration.
The date could have been marked with fanfare and ambitions for more regional airports in the border province, if not for the plane crash.
A Brazilian-made ERJ-190 turbine jet run by Henan Airlines broke into two after it crashed on landing at Lindu Airport Tuesday night. Fifty-four people survived with injuries, including the pilot.
By Friday, no progress has been reported of the government probe, except an announcement from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) Thursday that the flight recorders had been sent to Beijing for data analysis.
The CAAC said in a brief dispatch Friday it had launched a safety overhaul at all domestic airlines.
About 30 ERJ-190s are in operation on the Chinese mainland, including five owned by Henan Airlines and 25 by Tianjin Airlines.
Within 24 hours of the accident, another ERJ-190 overshot the runway on landing Wednesday in Nanning, southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
The Tianjin Airlines aircraft was en route from Xi'an in the northwestern Shaanxi Province to Nanning and was about to head for Haikou in the southern island province of Hainan.
Though authorities have published no investigation results, Chinese aviation experts have taken the accidents as an alarm for the country's rapidly expanding, yet immature, regional aviation market.
MUSHROOMING AIRPORTS
The number of air trips taken in China grew from 67.2 million in 2000 to 230.5 million in 2009, according to the CAAC. The number is expected to hit 260 million this year.
In tandem with the passenger flow, China has built 45 new airports between 2006 and 2010 to include smaller cities like Yichun in its fast-expanding civil aviation network, according to the CAAC.
Heilongjiang Province alone has nine airports, including Taiping Airport in Harbin and eight regional airports serving smaller cities, including Mohe on the northernmost Chinese border.
The province plans to build at least three more airports before 2015 -- and it is still not the most ambitious bidder amid the nationwide craze for expansion.
In 2011-2015 budgets submitted to the CAAC earlier this year, Sichuan Province planned to build six more airports, the central Hubei Province planned five, and Hebei Province neighboring Beijing said it needed three more regional airports.
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