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Firm Says Yun-7 Not Defective
The manufacturer of a domestic passenger plane which crashed and killed 49 people on June 22 in Wuhan yesterday categorically ruled out that the accident was caused by mechanical problems with its aircraft.
Sources from the Xi'an Aircraft Industry Co, the maker of the ill-fated Yun-7 plane, said that all the remaining six Yun-7 passenger planes owned by Wuhan Airlines, which were not permitted to fly by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) in the wake of the disaster, are expected to resume flights tomorrow.
Sun Hongbo, deputy secretary-general of the Party Committee of the large State-owned company in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, which manufactured the planes, said that analyses of the crashed plane's flight recorders (black boxes), which recorded the performance and condition of the Yun-7 aircraft, have been done. The plane was flying from Enshi in the southwest part of Hubei to the provincial capital Wuhan on June 22.
Although the final investigative results have yet to be announced (by civil aviation authorities), experts from the manufacturer claimed the Yun-7 plane itself is reliable. "The air crash was not the result of mechanical problems," Sun said.
The belated announcement of the cause of the first crash of the Chinese-made Yun-7 aircraft has fuelled speculations that mechanical or operational mistakes were to blame for the disaster. Yet many experts also believed that it was the stormy weather on June 22 that led to the air crash.
On Thursday, the Aircraft Airworthiness Department of CAAC in Beijing reportedly said that the CAAC would consider issuing a "no-fly" order on all the Yun-7 series if the aircraft deficiencies were held responsible for the tragedy, according to some Chinese newspaper reports.
However, Wang Xuemin, an official with the department, yesterday denied the reports.
"Theoretically speaking, it is irresponsible to jump to conclusion before the final investigation results surface," he said.
The Wuhan Yun-7 airliner (Yun-7 100 model) that was being flown prior to the crash had recorded 11,889 safe flight hours and completed 10,671 take-offs and landings by the end of May, finishing two-thirds of its lifespan, according to an investigative group from the Xi'an company. The group just returned from the Wuhan accident site. No glitches were found before the air crash, they said.
The Yun-7 100 model planes have passed the country's aircraft airworthiness standards and can still remain in flight if one of the engines fails, Sun said.
Key facilities in the aircraft, such as hydraulic pressure, undercarriage, power supply and radio navigation systems have redundant or backup systems, according to a Xi'an official.
"The Yun-7 operation manual has made strict regulations regarding flying in emergency or in complicated climate conditions," Sun said.
Between 1986 and the end of this May, the Xi'an aircraft manufacturer had made and delivered 131 Yun-7 planes, which had flown nearly 700,000 hours safely without any problems, he said.
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